Nightlife of the Gods
by G.Dunbar
Summary: Salvation a la mode. Lies, love, blood, mud, and mutants...2nd book in a series
1. Default Chapter Title

NIGHTLIFE OF THE GODS: Salvation à la mode. Lies, love, blood, mud and mutants. Book Two of a series. 

In a tale not to be taken lightly with its early exploration of culture vs domestic violence, and morality, the tumultuous early days of the Bajoran Prophecy continue with Bashir and Dax clashing over Worf, Curzon, and Klingons, to crash-land in each other's arms and emerge lovers.

Elsewise, willing to bear witness to the harsh and horrifying realities of Anar's remote Bajoran colony of Maquis survivors, Kira remains deaf and blind to the Prophets and Ziyal, leaving a disgruntled and bored Q longingly looking forward to the future happening anytime soon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 

Embracing Gene Roddenberry's creation Star Trek together with the characters and setting of Paramount's Star Trek: DS9 and the occasional character/lifeform/species from The Original Series and Star Trek The Next Generation, _The Time of Hagalaz is an umbrella title for a series of twelve alternative Star Trek: DS9 novels. Not meaning the stories takes place in an alternative universe, though the reader is certainly welcome to view the series in this manner, but rather simply instead upholding the idea of a recording of future history. From there exploring the infinite realm of possibilities and variables there are in the universe, of which there are always at least two distinctly different and opposite realities guaranteed e.g. one where you do, and the other where you don't?_

_ _

_Nightlife of the Gods: Salvation à la modeis the second novel. Its story, prophecy, and characters: Anar (aka Shakaar Adon, the elder), Nadya, Elise, Sian, Gul Anon and Sentinel Pfrann Dukat, Doctor Janice Lange, Chief Engineer Tan,Doctors Tracy and Rebecca Sorge, Michelle Faraday, Doctors Alexis Ortiz, Hamilton, and Dupo-Frey, Noya, Viola, Shakaar "Hawk", and assorted supernumeraries, are the author's contribution to the existing Star Trek Universe._

As far as Stardate/placement/time _The Time of Hagalaz, begins roughly set in 2375 and the aftermath of Ziyal's death at the hands of Damar. A point where Dukat is not free to wreak further havoc, but instead detained by the Federation, undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment in an effort to bring him to trial for war crimes. The Dominion has retreated to watch, Damar assuming precarious control of the Cardassian Government in conjunction with its Civilian Council. _

G. Dunbar [gad@yahoo.com][1]

THE TIME OF HAGALAZ

"Are you familiar with the Terran tale of Adam and Eve?" The omnipotent entity Q coiled his way around the ponderous trunk of the blossoming tree to inquire of the Bajoran-Cardassian child Ziyal as she sat in her Prophets' garden paradise enjoying her newfound elation since being blasted into her mother's welcoming arms by the lethal pointing of Damar's phaser some eight Federation months ago.

"Oh," Ziyal said in the same fixed innocence that had hindered her throughout her abbreviated life of twenty-two Bajoran years and remained preserved in eternity and death. "Well, no."

"Good!" Q scurried over to join her, presenting her with a luscious Kaferian apple to enjoy as a tasty treat while he wove the inspiring tale of love eternal, life immortal. The history and development of suburbs and proper dress on the Terran world called Earth. Explained its plot, its premise, and, of course, its climatic ending where Eve married Adam and had _three, children, not only a mere one. The five of them living happily ever after, together with their world for however many hundred thousand years or so._

"Really?" Ziyal breathed, enthralled.

"Really!" Q crossed his heart and swore. "A parallel, you understand, to the situation now facing us all. The future of the galaxy must be protected, the lineage of His Slime Dukat, preserved. Not too easy to do when its principal donor lies languishing in some Federation jail for the criminally insane, oblivious to much more than his fate."

"Oh," Ziyal frowned. His Slime Dukat was her father, a vile, putrid, lizard-lipped Cardassian of a man. A cruel being. An evil soul. Cold, unyielding, and unfeeling for the 50 million Bajoran souls the Cardassian Occupation created and he contributed to, dancing on their graves with his shoulders back, and head held high. An ego entrenched and impenetrable as his thick gray leathery hide dipped in the shrouded black uniform of the once-upon-a-time all-mighty Central Command might now just about as defunct as he.

"Oh, well, I don't know about that," Ziyal continued to frown, truly believing much of her father's ignorance of his impending fate of spending the rest of eternity as a has-been dictator, and forgotten no-man, was all by choice. He was insane, she admitted, she supposed, but in a sad way, not only a bad way. Collapsed under the shock her death, not just the loss of his political career, his union of Cardassia with the Gamma Quadrant's powerful Dominion not turning out exactly the way he planned.

Q eyed her. How charmingly ignorant she was, far too delightfully gullible to resist. "And, of course, once succeeding in channeling your father's energies along a far more productive path, we can then get down to this nuisance business of the Cardassian outpost Silas 4, and the impending intra-galactical war," he tossed in offhandedly, though confident she could see as well as he that while a threat of doom might be redundant, it wasn't dull.

"Oh," Ziyal said, hardly thinking of Silas 4, that was true. Not that it wasn't a significant point in her Prophets' prophecy, it was, possibly the most significant. But so were many other issues important, each in their own time and way. "But that's not for two years yet."

"One," Q assured. "One. A wink of an eye to you and I, I realize; an eternity, however, to some."

Ziyal shook her ponderous Cardassian head heavily woven with plaits and waves. "I also don't know about that," she proclaimed for reasons other than what he said didn't seem to make much sense. "My father isn't even considering being cooperative, and first he has to be returned to his status as Chief Military Advisor -- "

"Eat!" Q stuffed the apple in her mouth. "And, of course, listen; _listen." His arm draped across the back of their bench with an encouraging pat of her shoulder, pressing a data padd into her hand. "Notes. Take notes."_

"All right, I'll take notes," she shrugged.

"Excellent!" he approved. "Now, where were we?"

"Understanding the parallel of Adam and Eve?"

"Better known as?" he urged. "As?" he said.

"Doctor Bashir and Commander Dax?" Ziyal hazarded with the density of the novice she was.

Q gawked at her. "Oh, for mercy's sake!" he snatched the padd away to fill in the blank.

"Oh!" Ziyal burst into a smile when the secret of who and what he spoke of was revealed.

"Yes…" Q drawled. "I knew _that would get your attention. Along with every solid, gaseous, liquid lifeform from here to the rim of the Andromeda Galaxy…But!" he said as brightly as the brimming golden crown surrounding his head. "They'll just all have to learn how to deal with it. Him. __Them," he breathed seductively, provocatively. "__Now where were we?" _

NIGHTLIFE OF THE GODS

CHAPTER ONE

Time: 2375 Eight months post Federation-Cardassian-Dominion War 

Place: Bajoran outpost station Deep Space Nine 

Stardate: Unknown

"No, it's all right!" Anar's pleasant and teasing Bajoran voice reassured a startled Major Kira Nerys when she emerged from her unexpected transport from the station's amphitheater to find herself aboard the bridge of young Gul Anon Dukat's Galor-class battle cruiser the _Tir. "You have it confused who is in escort of whom. It's you, most assuredly, in escort of I. I knew Sisko would never agree to my leaving otherwise."_

"I know it's all right!" Kira pulled her arm free of his amused grasp with a shove. Her attractive face flamed an angry dark red, the color of her short, cropped hair. Bajoran herself, once Resistance, now teamed with the Federation to salvage her ravaged planet, the terrorist calling himself Anar was not a "brother of her world" she would ever embrace or uphold. His past and soul tainted by his Maquis affiliation, infected by his brazen and conflicting unity with the sons of the butchering bastardDukat, of which Anon was the eldest at only twenty-four.

"You have five minutes; five minutes!" she informed Anar, the Cardassian Tan, and anyone else who might be interested there aboard the bridge. Her political and personal enemy Legate Damar not one of them, Anar noticed. Though likely, the reigningCardassian Emperor's absence from his court was due more to being temporarily indisposed rather than dead, killed by the hulking Tan in anticipation of Anar's arrival to guarantee the Town Elder his anonymity as Bajor's First Minister Shakaar Adon's unfavorable uncle. An anonymity dwindling quickly,because for all the dissimilarities between Anar and his famous nephew they bore each other's face, identical twins separated by beliefs and twenty years age difference. 

"Damar is in his quarters." Anon's giant Chief Engineer Tan moved forward from his console with a chuckle and a wave of his arm, reading the look in Anar's eyes and the question on his mind. "A strong suggestion to remain."

"A suggestion one can always hope Damar disobeys," Anar countered with a smile.

"One can," Tan agreed. He looked down on the petite Major Kira Nerys, liaison to the Federation and their commander Captain Benjamin Sisko inhabiting her station rather than Dukat. Tan smiled. "What, Nerys? The _Defiant. We know, the __Defiant. Anar sits in escort by the __Defiant home when Anon says he sits in escort by the __Defiant home. You disagree?" his chuckle returned to increase. "Complain to Dukat when he returns from the UFP. Until then Anon is the commander, not you."_

Kira pushed his arm out of her way, even though it wasn't in her way and stalked off with a bark for Anar to follow her. If Kira's defiance of the giant amused Anar, the continuing implication of her familiarity with the crew, and now the structural layout of Dukat's battle cruiser quieted him.

Anar was suddenly in the role of Sisko staring at the Bajoran Major Kira suddenly in the role of him confusing the observers. The Federation unable to grasp how a relationship could possibility exist between this uncle of Bajor's First Minister and the sons of Cardassia's infamous Dukat without the mandatory collusion, betrayal, even though Kira's demeanor and actions hardly proposed friendship as the definition of her relationship with Dukat. To the contrary, arrogance ruled her when her anger did not. It had to be a deep, abiding hatred for the former Cardassian Prefect of Bajor that caused Kira's behavior to disturb Anar so. Never having met Dukat personally, the guiding rule to him was anyone who had would shun the monster and everything about him, not know names of men six years after Terok Nor had been surrendered to Bajor. If Kira's commission forced her into a continued association with the former Dictator, her insecurities undercut her status. Determined to hold her own, she did not hold her own. Her rage and hatred controlling her better senses, pitting her needlessly against the matchless power she, herself, bequeathed on Dukat.

That's how Anar saw it, anyway.Dukat's face laughing behind the amusement of his crew at Kira's straight stiff back and head held high.

"That's all right, go; follow," Tan was waving Anar on. "Anon is in his quarters as well; Janice, too. Kira knows where it is. Do what she says." He laughed so hard he coughed. "Before you get in any more trouble."

"I'll remember that," Anar agreed quietly.

"Yes," Tan believed he would. "Or she'll tell you."

Whether or not she intended to, whether or not she wanted to. Anar kept step beside Kira allowing her to lead the way to the commander's quarters. The hand that caught the door of the lift before it closed was Pfrann's, Dukat's seventeen-year-old son. The Sentinel's youthful features mirroring his father's as Shakaar Adon's mirrored his uncle Anar. Sian, Anar's adult son, was with Pfrann. Janice's two overstuffed duffels of data logs divided between them, a third small canvas sack Pfrann carried apparently held her limited collection of personal items.

"Hello, Nerys," Pfrann teased Kira with an impish grin suggesting he was also expecting to see her.

"Just…" Kira didn't finish just what, taking the small canvas bag from him to rifle through it. "Are you sure this is everything?"

"Yes, we're sure," he said. "We had to go to security to claim it; ask him."

Him was Sian, currently advising his father of the same chain of nonsense. "The Changeling had them call the tailor Garak to verify the inventory."

"And her data logs?" Anar was less interested in dresses and shoes than Janice's actual property being returned to her.

"Please," Pfrann groaned with a dramatic roll of his glittering yellow eyes, reciting in chorus with Sian, "'Potentially restricted information' -- that was it, right? 'Potentially restricted information.' If it's potentially restricted now, it was potentially restricted when Janice brought it with her -- excuse me, we're taking it; and we did. We did," he winked with a second sly, almost sultry grin for Kira as the lift halted and they disembarked. "Save you the trouble, right? That's what I told them. Give them to me, or give them to Nerys. Which way you want it?" He strode off down the short corridor.

"That's what he did," Sian said amused to Anar.

"Yes." As precociously, Anar was sure. He caught up with Pfrann in front of Anon's quarters, his head tipped confidentially close to Pfrann's ear. "Is there a particular reason why you are teasing her?"

"Nerys?" Pfrann activated the intercom with a request for admittance. "Not really, no -- why?" his grin flashed suddenly again. "You think I should stop?"

"I would say yes…" Anar gave a nod to the visibly startled Counselor Rebecca Sorge answering the door. Upon her eighty year oldsoul never expecting to find the face of Shakaar Adon standing there; his father or brother, uncle or cousin. 

Pfrann shrugged, identifying himself to the gray haired Human. "Pfrann. Anon's brother."

"Yes," Rebecca replied. "We've met."

"That's true we have," Pfrann stepped in with an encouraging hand pressing against Anar's shoulder. "When you were my hostage -- it's all right. This is Anar, Janice's father; she will want to see him."

"Of course," Rebecca stepped back, not quite sure what to do, if she should or could do anything. "Tracy…Doctor Sorge is with Janice at the moment…"

"Yes," Anar excused himself past her. "If it's Janice's modesty, or my face, don't concern yourself with either."

"Well, no, it's neither, actually…" Rebecca attempted to say, finishing with Kira. "More the sheer number of us?"

"Kira," Kira said sullenly to the woman. "Major Kira Nerys."

"Yes," Rebecca agreed. Kira someone else she had met naturally; several times as a matter of fact over the past week. The last time just a few hours ago at Chief Engineer O'Brien's trial, the same with the tall Bajoran male behind Kira. Sian, Rebecca believed his name was, as he had been the one who had actually held her hostage for a brief, few minutes during the trial, not the teenage Cardassian Sentinel Pfrann. 

"Why not?" Rebecca just shrugged to Sian at that point, granting him entrance as well as Kira stepped in to step past her. The commander's quarters were reasonably sized, after all, starkly Cardassian with everything in its place, however little everything constituted. If the battle cruiser was now destined to suffer some ill fate due to its concinnity being disturbed, it wasn't the fault of the furniture or furnishings.

"Oh, my," Rebecca sighed. It was perhaps a slight exaggeration to say the world as she knew it was crumbling around her, never to be the same again, with the introduction of the family Shakaar into the already heavily burdened drama of the Human Doctor Janice Lange and her Cardassian husband Gul Anon Dukat. But while it might not make things worse, it couldn't make them any better; could it? One would never know, as they could never tell by looking at Tracy, her husband, always so much better with these sorts of surprises than she was, the approaching face of Shakaar Adon no exception.

Doctor Tracy Sorge's so-credited miraculous ability to disregard the obvious probably had something to do with while the Bajoran might look like First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor, he was as clearly not Shakaar Adon, simply a member of the family. Twenty years older with a startling and youthening shock of stark white hair and a distinctly sharper edge to his potent aura, carrying the mark and charisma of an avenging angel, not a Redeemer.Whose face and figure the Bajoran carried as well was worth exactly what one wished to assign to it. 

The value Sorge assigned was a deadpan glance up from his medical tricorder and a grunt.But then he was a cynic at heart, having seen it all in eighty-three years, and if he hadn't, good chances were he was in the process of seeing it all now with the appearance of who had to be the elusive Mister Anar; again, self-explanatory as to why.

Sorge chose elusive to describe the wayward black sheep rather than invisible for the same reason Sisko chose elitist. There was no way the Bajoran could ever hope to be invisible; interesting that he chose not to wear his ear cuff as if that would somehow make a difference in anyone's ability to identify him.

"Anar…" Lange was glad to see the imposing figure with his blood splattered yellow jumpsuit bearing down on them as he was glad to see her in bed or not in bed; she was in bed. Dressed and sitting up, comfortably resting back against the powerful, massive arms of her husband protectively supporting her, her neuro transmitter blinking its steady green light. Anon Dukat appeared glad and relieved as well to have some of the emotional pressure lifted off his wife by the simple application of Anar's hug.

Rebecca was Rebecca. Her reaction predictable to a pair of reputedly super-strength Bajoran arms capable of killing five Klingons with little effort in the process of encircling Lange. "Careful of her neck!"

"Yes, well, he knows about her neck," Sorge grunted in reassurance for his wife as he stepped aside from the reunion to compare his medical screening of Janice with the Cardassian translation of Bashir's; interesting looking language. Didn't understand a word it said, nor could he begin to be able to pronounce it; but he would. In the meantime he let the system work its magic translating and assimilating his input while he relied on what had been identified by Anon as Anar's original carefully crafted Bajoran script from which he then apparently drew the final Cardassian draft. As apparently there was no immediate end in sight to this fellow Anar's many talents.

"Yes, well, I know he _knows about her neck," Rebecca said._

"Remember it, too," Sorge assured. "Same as her husband, same as the rest of it. I'm surprised O'Brien lived to see his trial -- "

"Hearing," Rebecca interjected.

"Thank you," Sorge said. "And O'Brien wouldn't have lived if either of them were that convinced of his guilt; which obviously neither of them were. Had Sisko known about Janice's relationship with Anon, or for that matter with this Anar -- "

"Shakaar," Rebecca interrupted. "Shakaar Adon. Tracy, look at that man and tell me you don't see Shakaar Adon."

"Looks like him, doesn't he?" Sorge agreed. "Probably related, you're right."

"Oh for goodness sake," Rebecca ran her hand across her soft, short curls. "Of course he's related. It's more than just his face. Anyone can have someone else's face -- " she stopped at Pfrann Dukat.

Probably a good idea that she stopped for no reason other than Cardassians liked the unsettling effect they caused in people whether or not they were going to do anything about it, and Sorge wasn't inclined to provide them with anything they might like; Lange was a different story. So in that way he guessed he was providing them with something. Though he remained to be convinced Janice choosing Cardassia Prime and its son of Gul Dukat as a place and a mate with whom to spend her life qualified as good judgment anymore than choosing this Anar as some sort of replacement for a father. He was beginning to understand why Lange may have been satisfied to take her doctorates in anthropology and forensic sciences from Starfleet Medical Academy and leave, and why Starfleet may have let her go; not avant-guard enough for her. Starfleet wasn't necessarily overly fond of the avant-guard. They liked the Sorges, the Siskos; most of the time. Until the time the Sorges and Siskos got it into their heads to be as independent as the next one, and probably then some.

Doctor Tracy Sorge thought about the station's powerful and commanding Captain Benjamin Sisko during O'Brien's hearing. The only thing that had kept the Captain from throttling the Klingon Legal Advocate Ch'Pok and sending Magistrate T'Lara to her room was his training and even then it was touch and go a few times. Interesting put alongside Sisko's obvious high code of moral ethics and social conduct. Rules he didn't necessarily mind bending when it came to himself, whether he realized it or not, and whether or not he would agree. Chances were however, Sisko's staff did not have the same authority to bend the rules unless otherwise instructed to do so.

The two who might prove a little difficult to the Captain in that area were probably the two other personalities who impressed themselves on Sorge the most. Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien, who placed no stock in appearances whatsoever, and Sisko's dapper Chief Medical Officer Julian Bashir, who was clearly obsessed with appearances.Of the remaining three, the independent Major Kira Nerys seemed a bit intolerant, the Klingon Worf silent, his Trill wife Commander Jadzia Dax generally introspective. Also interesting because for the moment Major Kira was all three as she stood off to the side, her eyes downcast. It was a typical Bajoran pose when confronted by something of which they did not approve; clearly the whole business.

"Who'd I forget?" Sorge asked Rebecca. "I've forgotten someone."

"What?" Rebecca said, attempting to distract herself away from staring at Anar; a typical habit of Humans. The more they didn't want to look, the more they looked.

Sorge nodded. "Constable Odo."

"What about Constable Odo?"

"Interesting lifeform."

"Aren't we all?" she agreed, finally just turning her back on Anar and his celebrity and concentrating on the console.

"Nervous?" Sorge chuckled.

"About going to Cardassia? Don't be absurd. It has nothing to do with Cardassia."

"More to do with our Mister Anar."

Rebecca sighed. "Well, what exactly would you like me to do? What are you going to do?"

"Forget about it."

"Forget about it," she repeated. "Yes, of course. That probably is the idea, isn't it? Compulsory, as a matter of fact." She could see the reflection of the Bajoran Sian behind her in the console. His own face, his father's edge, it was easier to see the differences separating him from First Minister Shakaar. From the officious authority of the Cardassian troop he called brothers and friends?She decided it was probably best to just change the subject altogether. "What was that you were saying about Captain Sisko?"

Sorge grunted. "Only had he known of Janice's relationship with Anon and Anar, he would have known immediately O'Brien was innocent."

"I believe he always knew that."

"No, he believed it. He would have known it. That Anar didn't kill five Klingons who did nothing to him and allow the man who assaulted his daughter, surrogate or otherwise, live to walk into that amphitheater, anymore than her husband did."

"You say they did nothing to us," Sian spoke up immediately in his father's defense.

"I did," Sorge agreed brusquely. "Say it again, if you like."

"No, that isn't necessary," Rebecca quickly patted his arm, encouraging his attention elsewhere. "How is Janice?"

"Fine," Sorge said. "She's had a mild stroke, but it's clearing. She'll probably have a few more of them until she stabilizes -- "

"You need Bashir?" Kira interrupted, suddenly alert and apparently of the same persuasion as the Cardassians who considered Bashir to be some sort of package to be picked up when needed and set down wherever.

"I taught Bashir," Sorge snorted. Which wasn't exactly true, for which Bashir should probably be grateful. Sorge didn't like students who knew more than their teachers, if only because they couldn't possibly. "Strokes we can handle.What Janice can't handle is the stress of a side trip to return her family to the outer colonies. I don't care if it's twenty light-years or only one; out of the question. So's Cardassia Prime technically, but we'll manage. Presuming since you're here, someone's already thought of that? Someone being Captain Sisko?"

"Yes," Kira's voice and gaze was steady matching Sian's. The two of them an odd mixture of everything they admired and everything they condemned in each other. "Your father is aware of Captain Sisko's orders."

"That the _Defiant stands to escort the Maquis home, not the __Tir," Sian inserted. "Sisko gets his way, for the colony is twenty light-years from Terok Nor. Bajoran or Cardassian, we will never jeopardize Janice simply to say goodbye."_

"Deep Space Nine," Kira coldly corrected the occupying forces of the station to be Federation, no longer Cardassian.

"In neither event Bajoran," Sian agreed.

Kira flushed. "Which would you prefer?"

"Freedom?" he proposed something she apparently had forgotten about. "I'll tell Janice -- "

Kira's hand caught him before he completed a step; Sian looked her up and down. His head above the height of his father's, hers, barely touching his shoulders. "I'll tell her." Kira said.

Sian stepped back with a granting wave of his hand.

"Smart man," Sorge returned to the console and Janice's medical journals with a grunt. "If she's not shy about putting Martok in his place, she certainly isn't going to be shy about putting him."

"Yes, well, that man might be First Minister Shakaar's long-lost brother, or cousin, or whoever they are," Rebecca said.

"Maquis," Sorge offered. "Said it, and I don't think he was joking. Simply a new and different strain."

Neither did Rebecca think Sian was joking and she was hardly impressed; not by Sian or his radical politics. "That woman is Shakaar Resistance since the time she could walk. There with him at the liberation of Gallitep."

"How do you know all of this?"

"I try and keep up," Rebecca fluffed her curls. "Now that I'm retired, there's no excuse. Somewhat nice actually to have the time to know what's going on outside of one's own cubicle."

Sorge nodded. "Time to find you a new hobby."

There was no amusement slyly cloaked in the hard ruby eyes of Dukat's eldest son Anon regarding the striding approach of Kira Nerys. She was the enemy his father claimed her to be; he hadn't changed that opinion of Kira and he never would. Stiffening with annoyed disapproval at her appearance in his quarters for no reason except to harass him and upset Janice; he knew that. Why else would she be there? Even when she didn't approach at first, but lingered in the background with the Humans he was ready for her, waiting for her. Poised, contained, only for the sake of Janice quick to sense the immediate deadly change in his caring, sensitive mood. 

"Anon…" the soft touch of her hand promoted tolerance.

"She's not upsetting you," his heavy hand patted and smoothed her wiry mane of long brown hair in reassurance, his words as much for her as they were for Anar watching him. "It's not happening. I don't care what she says, don't listen to her."

Kira wasn't saying anything then, now she was. Strutting forward to crouch down bedside, her eyes downcast, ignoring Anon's unpleasant greeting telling her to get out and talking to Janice also ignoring him with a soft smile for the woman she had briefly called friend.

"Tolerance…" the hand gently touching Anon's arm in reminder was Anar's.

"I don't like her," Anon retorted.

Something Anar could see. Despise was probably accurate as it was evident, quite unlike the apparent acceptance of his troop. Or perhaps Anon was simply more honest; he usually was. A trait that still made Anar smile with a shake of his head almost a year after he'd met young Gul Anon Dukat and his younger brother Pfrann. If Anar and his surviving troop of Maquis were a new and different strain of Bajoran loyalists with their inexplicable union with the sons of Dukat, Anon and his Sentinels were a new and different stock of Cardassians, returning the binding hand of friendship and mutual respect. There was hope for the future yet. The Prophets chose wisely and well in their Guardians, Anar continuing to hope they were considering choosing Kira Nerys as well.

Her disapproval of him Anar was confident he could change. Anon's disdain for her relieved him. But then his inexplicable unity with Anon could be explained, if anyone cared to open their eyes and minds. Anar remained unyielding in his conviction Kira's association with Dukat could not be explained except by definition of shame, or possibly Ziyal.

He could forgive Kira her shame, as he could forgive the others before and after her, which Anon clearly could not.

Kira's unity with Ziyal Anar could understand up through the child's death two months before Gowron's Klingons sent her brother's critically damaged transport crash landing on Anar's small isolated world, now ten months ago. Beyond that? The half-Bajoran progeny of the former Cardassian Emperor Dukat was buried one year. Her father caged like the beast he was in a Federation isolation cell that same short year, the UFP's assortment of authorities diligent in their task to hold Dukat responsible for his crimes, if he could be held accountable. The assemblies were equally divided in their arguments disputing Dukat's mental state and therefore competency to stand trial. A technicality lengthening the process for the sole purpose of determining and invoking the appropriate political loophole that would give the Federation the power to intern Dukat on Elba II for eternity; regardless, it was time for Kira Nerys to get on with her life.

Janice smiled in gentle, sympathetic understanding for Kira's downcast eyes. "Can't you even try to look at me?" she wondered.

Kira hesitated, but then she looked up with a slight nod. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I can look at you…It isn't you…" she stared past Lange's emerald green eyes into the broad face of Anon with its heavy, prominent plating. Beyond the scowl she could see a faint resemblance to Ziyal she hadn't noticed until now. She shook her head, trying to remain focused on what was important; her duty, her task. "It's not important. Captain Sisko wanted me to convey…"

"Yes," Janice said, "Anon told me we're going to be escorted to the border."

"And home," Kira nodded. "The _Defiant will escort Anar and his troop -- "_

"Sian is my troop," Anar replied.

Kira ignored him, finishing Sisko's message. "Home from there."

Janice paused. "Home?"

"It's deep space, child," Anar reminded her gently. "Four days; a week more home to Cardassia Prime. You haven't the strength."

"Oh, but Nadya is expecting me…" she started to cry.

That was Anar's breaking point. The tension, fury, he attempted to keep under wraps for the child's sake threatened close to the surface. Consoling her, cradling her in his arms, there was pronounced sarcasm underscoring the question he posed irritably to Kira. "Can't we stay with her until the border?If I swear by all you hold sacred in the name Shakaar my son and I will surrender ourselves peaceably -- "

"Surrender?" Janice interjected horrified.

"A figure of speech, child," Anar reassured. "Captain Sisko has his concerns we make our home in the halls of Central Command rather than the fields of Dyaan IX."

"Dyaan IX?" Janice repeated, realizing he was talking about the colony, though not quite sure what he was saying.

Anar shrugged. "What do you think?"

Think? About naming the colony after some long-lost prized star-fighter?Janice turned to Kira. "You don't understand. Nadya's only just lost…"

"She doesn't need to understand," Anar stopped Janice at that crucial point deliberately. "She needs to trust…believe," his smile taunted Kira looking at him. "Find her faith."

Why did Kira have the feeling she was going to come away preferring to have spent the next two weeks with Dukat? Maybe it was just something in the way Anar held his head; maybe it was him. The intensity in his blue eyes. Like he thought he could see into her, deep down into her soul. She opened her mouth to say something and would have except she didn't know what she wanted to say. Settling for, "I'll tell Captain Sisko." She exited with her strut intact.

"That was easy," Anar mentioned to Anon sympathetically petting Janice's hair.

"Who was Dyaan? Nadya's mother?"

"His fighter," Janice sighed.

"What?" Anon said.

"His fighter," Janice sighed, not quite sure if she wanted to cry anymore or just groan. "He named his fighter after some woman he once knew…And now he's naming the colony? Oh, for heaven's sake, Anar," her fingers entwined tightly with his.

"Yes, I know, hopeless," he agreed.

"I wouldn't say hopeless. But, yes, I think if you asked Dyaan she would have preferred to have been married rather than immortalized on some star chart."

"Dyaan?" Anar thought back to one of his early mentors; her raven black Romulan hair. "No. The keys to the Alpha Quadrant, perhaps."

"Oh," Anon said. "Well, that makes sense, yes…not the keys to the Alpha Quadrant," he groaned to Janice looking at him with a pained expression, his brother snickering in the background. "The name. A name comes from somewhere. It means something…to you," he smiled at her. "Even if it doesn't mean anything to anyone else. What about a letter? What if we send Nadya a letter? You, I, Pfrann? Telling her about us, Cardassia Prime, and how we will come to visit as soon as we can…"

  


CHAPTER TWO

Janice could barely master translating and transcribing a complete sentence. The connective thought processes simply not there as overtired as she was. The task quickly became an ordeal, exhausting her further until finally in frustration she passed the duty onto Anon terrified and cajoling, claiming her wanting or needing to sleep evidence as to how much better she was, how much more relaxed she felt. The swelling of her brain started shortly after necessitating a call to the _Defiant and Bashir. Not for his expertise, his equipment. Sorge already knew what he was looking for; a blood clot.A small coagulation of extravasated blood. If he couldn't find it, he couldn't dissolve it.Bashir found it. Since he found it, Sorge let him take care of it._

An hour of hell, Janice was better in moments, life flowing back into her paralyzed right limbs, her speech once again coherent. Color flowing back into the corpse-like pigmentation of her husband's face, and the rest of her assortment of relatives; Rebecca right there with them, Sorge noticed. Comfortable in her adopted role as grandmother/matriarch beside Anar's father/patriarch. Having apparently forgiven Anar whatever his past transgressions, or at least she had the appearance of having forgiven him; she was talking to him. Rebecca didn't talk to people she didn't like. Anon Dukat she liked from the beginning, defensively and defiantly so even though she was initially annoyed with him for thinking with his heart rather than his political affiliation.

She was also relaxing with the company of Sian, come down off his high horse for the first time, as well as distinctly comfortable with the younger one, Pfrann. Serious when he needed to be serious. Generally quiet otherwise except for that random interjecting short laugh of his always accompanied by a knowing sweep of his bright yellow eyes. There were no flies on Pfrann Dukat despite his tender age. He knew it and he occasionally brought it to others' attention. Right now he stood at his brother's side in support, not competition. Interesting group. Sorge suddenly realized not only why he had appreciated Doctor Janice Lange but also truly liked her after the first few minutes they met just under a week ago. She was Rebecca all over again. Ardent, earnest, involved.

So was this one; Bashir. Lacking the same acceptable standards of social exchange and/or skills as Rebecca or Lange, he simply had his own version of social clumsiness with his soft-spoken detailed monologue that no one had the patience to listen to at the moment. Six years out of residency, straight into a position that had to be enviable to some as Chief Medical Officer for Deep Space Nine Bashir hadn't figured this out yet.

Anymore than he had apparently figured out the last thing any anxiously waiting relative wanted to hear were phrases like "just one of those routine complications one sees so often; nothing to be concerned about, really".Wrong. There was everything to be concerned about as far as they were concerned. Lange was their daughter, their wife, their sister, and on down the line. What amounted to routine to Bashir, constituted a crisis to them. In seeking to reassure, Bashir committed the unforgivable of invalidating their concern, and as long as he didn't mind having his head chewed off by every incensed third relative or so, Sorge supposed it was the way to go.

He got lucky this time. No one interrupted Bashir's insensitive display of sensitivity to chew his head off. What they did was walk away from him having heard what they wanted to hear; Bashir's opening line: "Yes, she's fine. Quite fine". Said compassionately, earnestly, quietly. Had he the brains man gave him that Nature did not he would have left it there. Allowing them the opportunity to ask their questions, if only ask permission to see Lange. He did not. With little more than a breath he moved straight into his complex, caring dissertation realizing himself by his third or fourth sentence he was losing his audience's attention moments before he lost them altogether. Pushing roughly past him en masse back into the commander's quarters, whether it was advisable or not, to see Lange's state for themselves, in a way they could comprehend it, leaving Bashir to turn his speech on Sorge and promptly proceed to unintentionally insult him as politely.

"Quite," Bashir said as far as no one stopping to thank him for his life-saving actions. There was a nervousness in the movement of his hand Sorge didn't notice at first but did shortly.A distant, faraway look in his hazel brown eyes. "Are you sure you're going to be able to handle this?"

What Bashir meant Sorge had a suspicion the young doctor knew. He waited to find out.

"Quite," Bashir said again somewhat resigned. Hearing the potential criticism in his question of one of the greatest minds in the field of science and medicine and so he wasn't entirely deaf to himself. "I don't mean are you capable of handling Janice's condition and convalescence, I mean do you feel you have the ability?"

"It would be easier if I had the appropriate equipment," Sorge snorted, never laboring under the misconception that he, personally, had any talent for social intercourse whatsoever, which he didn't. "If that's what you actually mean."

It was what Bashir meant and his counterpoint was interesting.Possibly not what Sorge expected, certainly cause for pause. "Don't worry about the equipment."

That's when Sorge noticed the nervousness after he finished looking at Bashir, down to the doctor's medical bag and behind himself at the door to the commander's quarters. "What about your inventory?" he grunted, certain Bashir was looking at something like ten to twenty years if he happened to get caught freely dispensing Federation equipment to the Cardassian Union, which was basically what it amounted to.

"Don't worry about the inventory," Bashir appeared to be looking for a way out of the close confines of the ominous and oppressive corridor; collect his bearings anyway.

"There's hope for you yet," Sorge admitted. Not that he really doubted there was the makings of a person, never mind a doctor, under that highly polished façade, simply his own training and background that had him frowning down on genetically enhanced peoples of any race or species. They were cheaters, thieves, if they were nothing else. Stealing the spots and limelight that otherwise should have been held in reserve for those who worked, earned the right to stand there.

In any event they couldn't possibly be stable. Not emotionally, mentally, or physically, in his expert opinion. That was a damned and given impossibility. With three centuries of documentation to back up that claim. Nevertheless, Sorge grunted again, that time tolerantly and in explanation for the silent Bashir. "That was meant as a compliment."

"Yes," Bashir replied, distantly as before, his nervousness defined, the faraway look in his eyes entrenched as he continued to look around. "Thank you. Something actually I would like to believe myself."

On the other hand, if, with that sentence, Bashir meant to convey a sense of humility and/or modesty, he failed miserably, which was fine with Sorge. Dedicated and caring were Sorge's limits. Meek and unassuming Doctor Julian Bashir definitely was not; frightened almost for some reason he appeared to be, still looking up and down and around the long, narrow corridor that looked like any corridor to Sorge other than it was Cardassian.

He said as much. "It's just a ship. Like any other ship."

"Simply staffed by Cardassians," Bashir agreed in return. 

He said staffed by, he may as well have said stocked with like they were some sort of inanimate commodity. Sorge was back to snorting. "Difference in uniform, that's all."

"Hardly," Bashir said. "I wear a uniform." He wasn't quite sure what the Cardassians wore. Or for that matter what the fascination was with their sense of architecture. The ability to make everything and everyone look the same? Which they couldn't possibly do, but they certainly did try. Rows of gray statues with straight collar length black hair. Unbroken walls of the same non-color. Absolutely no definition separating where a wall might end and a doorway might be; no landmarks of any sort. A wall unit here, there was an identical wall unit a set distance away and so on down the line. It was immediately disorientating. Damn concinnity, or whatever they professed to call it. It was intentional psychological warfare. The Human eye and brain confused to find itself in what it interpreted to be some sort of labyrinth. Uncertain as to the way out, and equally uncertain as to what had been the way in.

"I believe I came in that way," Bashir pointed following staying around long enough to unburden himself with all of the above and load it onto Sorge who refused to shoulder it because it was nonsense. 

"Yes, I'm confident the lift is that way," Bashir decided.

"Yes," so was Sorge confident. The same as he was confident once locating the lift with the assistance of the Cardassian Sentry waiting to escort him, Bashir would eventually find himself back at the nondescript transporter pad colored the same non-color as everything else around it. Not some decompression chamber, or wherever it was he feared they might be planning to take him. But then as he said, brilliant, young, handsome Doctor Julian Bashir might be; stable, he couldn't possibly be.

"Quite," Bashir said and departed. Had he the ability to read minds he may have lingered to say something else because no, he wasn't stable. Or at least he didn't feel quite stable at the moment. Nothing to do with his genetic enhancement, everything he believed having to do with the overwhelming oppressiveness of the Cardassian entity in general, the corridor in specific.

Bashir literately felt like he was walking in a dream; a nightmare. Janice Lange waiting for him at the end of the long, narrow dimly lit corridor, grotesquely sprawled on a sterile-looking bed in the center of her sterile quarters rather than the sterile confines of the station's Infirmary. A glaring portrayal of man's inhumanity to man, whether the man was Human, or in the specific case of Janice Lange's vicious assailant, believed Bajoran; this hour anyway. The hour before the Chief had been the Federation's prime suspect. Now however it was no less than the younger of the two previously unknown wayward uncles to Bajor's First Minister Shakaar Adon, a twenty-seven year old male known simply by the nonsensical name Hawk. Shakaar Hawk. As opposed to his older brother the Hawk; aka Anar aka Shakaar Adon, the elder. Perhaps it wasn't Bashir who was unstable after all, but the entire galaxy slowly going crazy having finally gone crazy. Bashir had a feeling it was both.

Dax was waiting for him at the transporter pad aboard the _Defiant, Kira with her. Apprehension marring Kira's face, concern scratched over Jadzia's that she attempted to cloak with her usual smile. _

"No, she's fine, she's fine," Bashir answered the anticipated question regardless of which of them asked. "More of an episode of fright, actually. Nothing more."

He was talking quietly, averting his eyes. Avoiding Dax's as he stood there with his head tipped down, his hand patting her upper arm in reassurance. She knew immediately he was lying about something. But then she knew him. Better in ways than he knew himself; did she?

Bashir lifted his head to stare deeply into Dax's velvet eyes. Did she know, for example, how at that precise moment he wanted more than anything to hug her; did she know why? Did she know he wanted to step off the transporter pad into her arms and kiss her, maddeningly passionately, afterwards saying something utterly absurd like "Thanks. I needed that." He was losing his mind, quite possibly having lost it completely just recently. Out loud he said something that made almost as little sense. "Shouldn't one, or the both of you be on the bridge at all times? I thought that was the rule." 

He exited, leaving Dax to look at Kira and Kira to look back at Dax. "I'll take the bridge," Kira volunteered.

That sounded reasonable and fair. "I'll take Julian," Dax agreed. 

That also sounded reasonable and fair. Kira just wasn't sure what Dax could do with Bashir once she found him to fix whatever it was about him that was broken. After six years he seemed somewhat hopeless to her.

Not meaning to say she didn't like Bashir, she did. After she liked Sisko and Odo, both of whom she ardently admired, and long before Garak and Quark, whom she utterly loathed. Dax was probably her closest female friend aboard the station. Worf, Kira seldom thought about. Similar to the Chief, who she was working hard on forgiving for putting himself in the position to have even been considered a suspect in Janice Lange's brutal assault.

That was something they were all working diligently on, including the Chief. Unfortunately they had their usual little time to focus on what was past and over before they had to quickly move onto the next pressing issue. One defined for the moment as escorting the reigning Cardassian Emperor Damar safely from Deep Space Nine to his border, leaving the _Tir and her impatiently waiting squadron ofbattle cruisers to see the Emperor home from there. From there the task of the __Defiant was to then escort the Maquis leader Anar and his son Sian ten light-years home. Sisko simply in good conscience unable to see himself leaving the safety of the uncle of Shakaar Adon in the hands of the son of Gul Dukat, regardless of the mutually proclaimed abiding friendship between the two men; it made no sense to him. Not when he was first confronted by that contrasting reality and not an hour later when his senior staff assembled for duty aboard the __Defiant; Lange's ability to withstand a week's travel in deep space was an afterthought, if it was a thought at all. _

Major Kira brought Lange and her ordeal sharply back into focus when she emerged from the lift to greet Sisko waiting aboard the bridge of the _Tir; deliberately, defiantly. If there was discomfort surrounding the presence of the Federation so close to their control center, their heart, it wasn't Sisko's, but the Cardassian officer's at the helm. The giant Tan at Ops._

"Major," Sisko had greeted Kira in return. Without having to say a word she had to know he was wondering why she was alone, about the whereabouts ofMister Anar and his son Sian. Sisko had anticipated their defiance of his orders long before Anar attempted to tantalize them one last time with his sudden departure from the station's amphitheater, Kira in tow. 

That magician's act of enacting transport despite the heavily shielded arena was precisely why Sisko was there aboard the _Tir. For as much as Mister Anar might continue to think he had a say in where he was going, he truly was going nowhere except where Sisko told him he was going. That was home, in escort by the __Defiant, not the __Tir. What Sisko did not anticipate was Kira's answer, a moment later however he did. She was still Bajoran. Anar still the uncle of Shakaar Adon. Lange still the equivalency of an adopted daughter despite her status as an adult by Federation standards. Understandably emotionally traumatized by the realization she was not going to have the opportunity to say goodbye to her family and friends waiting for her at home. Months, if not years before she would see them again, if she would ever see them again._

But then she really wasn't the daughter of Shakaar Adon, the elder. Sister to his son Sian. Sisko listened as patiently as he could to Kira's muddled explanation behind what she considered to be a reasonable request to allow Anar and Sian to remain aboard the _Tir until the point of transfer at the border of Federation, Bajoran, and Cardassian space. It was a gamble, she knew it. He knew it. As much as a gamble as suggesting there may actually be some scientific and/or medical value to a palm-sized jar of heavy purple cream; the third task of the __Defiant upon returning Anar to his remote colony. A scientific expedition. An extremely brief one, an extremely limited one. Sisko found himself thinking about the bridge where he was standing for some reason not the touted miraculous properties of Doctor Lange's unpleasant looking purple goop. Something was conspicuously missing, someone; Damar._

"That's fine, Major," he interrupted Kira's offer to remain aboard the _Tir to insure Anar's compliance rather than risk the distinct possibility of the elder's attempted flight to proposed political sanctuary and Cardassia Prime. "However, no, that won't be necessary."_

Kira looked at him. If he hadn't anticipated her request, she hadn't anticipated him to interrupt her; not in agreement. They walked off the bridge together, through the airlock to the Promenade.

"Damar's in his quarters," Kira figured out what was praying on Sisko's mind.

"I find that interesting, Major," Sisko replied. "So should you."

Kira shrugged. "He's still Dukat."

Anon Dukat she meant, and yes, he was. To where Damar was still Mister Damar to young Gul Dukat. Sisko wondered briefly what the outcome of the Federation-Bajoran-Conference might have been if there had been no Mister Anar. No Neutral Janice Lange acting representative for the Bajoran Government; they'd never know. What he did know even beyond Anon Dukat's surprising choice of the Human Doctor Lange for a mate, was Mister Anar was Shakaar Adon, the elder. Someone, Sisko had a feeling, Damar knew absolutely nothing about, never mind anyone else.

"Here's to hoping Legate Damar is the one who makes it home, Major," Sisko was hardly joking when he left Kira at the turbolift that would bring her to the docking ring and the _Defiant. "Regardless of Damar's ineffectiveness Anon Dukat has to appreciate the assassination of the Cardassian Emperor on the heels of his father's internment would only catapult the Union into further turmoil."_

"Here's to hoping he doesn't," Kira boarded the turbolift.

Two hours later Sorge was hailing for Bashir to transport. Kira steeled herself for the worst, resisting the urge to transport with him, deciding to give Bashir an hour before she issued a demand hail to the _Tir for a status report on Lange. He was back aboard the __Defiant inside of thirty minutes, Lange once again fine, leaving Kira feeling uncomfortably free to resume her duty aboard the bridge.Dax equally free to resume hers; him. Kira wasn't entirely certain why Dax hovered along with her at the transport pad unless she was apprehensive Kira would transport regardless._

Dax wasn't. Who she didn't trust was Bashir not to vanish at warp speed once boarding the _Tir. Not because of any kidnapping, but because he had emphatically embraced the Cardassian invitation to accompany Lange to Cardassia Prime as her attending physician._

An invitation Benjamin had as emphatically declined on behalf of his Chief Medical Officer. Sorge solved the heated conflict between Benjamin and Julian by volunteering his and Rebecca's services in place of Bashir. Sisko accepted, so did Dukat. Though Dax suspected Dukat really didn't care about the name of the Human doctor attending his wife, only that he was Human and therefore expertly qualified to treat his Human wife. 

Who did care was Benjamin. Who also cared was Bashir. Dax didn't care what Julian had said not an hour later in his office aboard the station about her exaggerating his interest in accompanying Lange, which by then he maintained he had none. He was lying, and she could always tell when he was lying. Something she had reminded him of when he entered the _Defiant's transporter chamber to find both her and Kira in attendance._

"You have thirty minutes," Dax smiled sweetly, discreetly to Bashir passing her in a rush for the transporter pad. Her beautiful features as soft as her smile, her pale, sweeping line of Trill markings defining her hairline and throat flushed slightly suggesting she was serious. 

"What?" Bashir said, hearing Kira saying something about him having an hour.

"Thirty minutes," Dax assured before she transported to secure him, and transport to secure him she would if she had to chase him to Cardassia Prime to do so.

"Oh," Bashir said. Had he not been in a hurry and concerned about Sorge's call he would have dallied long enough to counter with something far more clever. But he was in a hurry, as well as concerned, and he was back within thirty minutes preoccupied, Dax was tempted to say, nervous. His hand absently patting her arm in reassurance almost out of reflex.

He was gone a moment later, Kira exiting a moment after him to return to the bridge. Dax missed catching up with Bashir at the turbolift, from there she simply couldn't find him. Not in the _Defiant's Infirmary or the makeshift science lab aboard the shuttlecraft currently occupying one of the ship's bays. If he was in his cabin he didn't answer her buzz.If he was in the crew quarters aboard the shuttle for some reason? Dax looked down the corridor, back in what would be the direction she had just come. She activated her com badge. "Commander Dax to Doctor Bashir."_

Julian still didn't answer her. She activated her com badge again requesting to know his whereabouts, the computer politely requesting her to state the nature of the emergency.

"No emergency," Dax signed off with a glance over the cabin door before she moved on to relieve Kira at navigation, certain Julian would show up on the bridge himself at some point. In the meantime, "Playing hard to get," she answered Kira's look with a smile when she entered the bridge. 

"Huh?" Kira said.

"Julian," Dax said. "Actually, I've an idea he's trying to get a jumpstart on having the expedition declared a medical study."

Kira scoffed, relinquishing her seat. "Benjamin's only trying to make a point to Shakaar. He no more thinks anything is going to come out of this, anymore than Shakaar did six months ago."

She was at least half right. Shakaar obviously hadn't attached any significance to Lange's botanical based compound; to Lange he as obviously had. Somewhere in there, between Janice Lange's petition to the Bajoran government to extend her anthropological grant to include a botanist, Lange went from being an archeologist to becoming Shakaar's representative in the upcoming conference with the Federation and Cardassia.

Something which could be construed as provocative, Dax supposed. Though shefound she was in agreement with Benjamin, not really thinking there was any personal interest in Lange on the part of Shakaar, Kira's immediate suspicion upon meeting the attractive Human doctor with her eye-catching untamed mass of hair. What Dax did believe, together with Sisko, was Shakaar Adon was not above dangling extending Lange's grant as repayment for her agreeing to represent him at the conference.

Anar's intimation the reason behind Shakaar's uncharacteristic actions would be found to be little more than an act of pure spite directed against him, drawn from some longstanding feud between uncle and nephew over their radical political differences only fueled Benjamin's fury. Damn what was supposed to be the point behind the conference: the installation of a Cardassian consulate on Bajor Prime to assist its Bajoran-Cardassian population. A cause to which Shakaar had been clearly apathetic since the beginning, agreeing to Bajor's participation only to appease the Federation; Sisko was outraged. 

Ordering the _Defiant to spend a week investigating Lange's reputed botanical based ointment was almost a form of punishment for Shakaar's inconceivable selfish attitude. One that Benjamin steadfastly upheld to be an underlying contributing cause to the past week from hell that began with the sacrifice of almost two hundred civilian lives at the hands of Hawk's Threat Force. If they came away from Anar's world with nothing, while it might take a few weeks for Sisko's anger with Shakaar to soften, Dax did doubt if Benjamin would pursue punishing Shakaar in any other way. Such as hauling Bajor's First Minister before the Federation's Supreme Assembly and demanding he be held solely accountable; Benjamin's underlining threat when he aborted Shakaar's attempt at justification, severing the transmission with the ferocious promise "I'll be in touch."_

If they came away with something? While Dax still doubted Benjamin would drag Shakaar up on charges she didn't doubt Shakaar would find himself signing an agreement for an extensive scientific survey of the distant world; Bajoran blessed and Federation controlled.

"Which just might be fun," Dax sat down with a shrug.

_Yeah, right, fun. O'Brien scoffed to himself at his station at Ops. One look around and anyone could see how much fun they were having already. Worf sullen and silent over the prospect of Jadzia spending an unchaperoned week in the company of Bashir; Kira apparently not counting._

Kira this close to biting her nails over having to leave Lange to her own fate. Crossing her fingers over momentarily leaving some Bajoran outlaw the Chief still only knew by the name of Anar, not yet having had the privilege of meeting "the bastard from the platform in Quark's" face to face. The bastard's bastard son Sian, O'Brien had met. The bastard's son Sian the bastard could keep together with his ideology. Kira, O'Brien ignored. He had to. The same as she had to ignore him. Something to do with the last three days and her being as determined as the Federation to hang him for Lange's assault, only to be abruptly knocked into reality along with the rest of them of how not only was O'Brien not guilty, but vulnerable and innocent Doctor Janice Lange was engaged to marry, of all people, the not-so-vulnerable or innocent Gul Anon Dukat. O'Brien had a headache. He had a headache when he woke up three days ago from his induced drunken stupor to find himself under arrest for attempted murder and physical violative assault,Klingon legal Advocate Ch'Pok only too eager to defend him, and he had a headache now. He would probably continue to have a headache for the next six weeks until he calmed down, never mind "things calming down" or anyone else.

Worf, O'Brien was half-tempted to tell welcome to the club. But then somewhere in the back of the Chief's mind he seemed to recall Julian saying something about Keiko being on her way from Earth with the two kids. Half-expecting to find her husband in jail, and instead destined to find him off on a jaunt ten light-years from home like nothing ever happened. Like they were just one big happy family. When not an hour ago half of them were recoiling from him like he had the Rigelian plague.

"Something wrong?" Sisko had asked O'Brien upon calling his Chief Engineer out from his sulk to report for immediate duty aboard the _Defiant for some hush-hush trip to the Bajoran outer colonies._

"Yes, there's something wrong," O'Brien assured. "Shouldn't there be?"

Sisko thought about that; the Chief's reasonable request to retreat from the glare of the spotlight to lick his wounds; by far the majority of them self-inflicted. "On your own time, perhaps," he smiled. "Right now, you're working for me."

"Yeah, right. On my own time," O'Brien said as the Captain walked away to resume command of the largest, most strategic Federation stronghold in the Alpha quadrant: Deep Space Nine, and he obediently moved on to replace the state-of-the-art runabout currently docked in the _Defiant's main docking bay with the oldest, most stripped down version of a cargo shuttle he could find with warp capabilities. He could find one. Affectionately dubbed the U.S.S. Ark. That ought to make Julian really happy. Worf happy as well as an earlier modification had converted an available supply cupboard across from the small, cramped two-man crew quarters into a smaller, cramped quarters for two more. The only other option would have been to throw down a portable bunk, sleep on the floor, or sleep in rotation. Something any normal crew wouldn't be concerned about, let alone even bothering to mention; notice the Chief said normal. This was no normal crew._

  


CHAPTER THREE

"Oh, come on now," Bashir groaned upon entering the shuttlebay littered with enough equipment to start a small clinic. "The Ark? You can't be serious, the Ark."

"Hey," O'Brien took time out from working on the toilet to flick his head toward the rear of the midsection. "I don't want to hear it. You've got a commissary. How many runabouts do you know have a commissary?"

"I don't know many runabouts," Bashir followed the Chief's so indicated line of vision back toward the replicator. "Not personally, that's true."

However, the fact that the replicator had an adjoining short counter attached to it, and a small detached square island sitting in front of it along with two uncomfortable looking stools, to him, did not a commissary make.

"And an Infirmary," O'Brien's burly chest squeezed its way past Bashir, borrowing his virotherapeutic unit to plunk it down on the counter.

  


"Science lab," Dax countered with a smile Bashir failed to muster.

"Whatever," O'Brien waved. "You'll make do."

"The devil I will," Bashir rallied in his misery to retort as Kira showed up to complete their trio.

"Are we on line?" she questioned.

"The waste management system or warp engines?" Bashir activated his com badge in search of Captain Sisko against Dax's better advice that he not bother. "Doctor Bashir to Captain Sisko…"

Kira looked at him, from him to the toilet, from the toilet to the Chief. "The engines," she assured.

"We're getting there," O'Brien promised.

_"You'll make do, Doctor," Sisko answered Bashir's question before asked, settling that._

"Quite, I guess I will," Bashir grimaced, excusing his way past Dax to check out their accommodations, or he should say his accommodations. Though it was highly doubtful if Starfleet took the gender of its two men crews into consideration whether they were of the same sex, the opposite sex, similar, or neither. Here, of course, they did take such things into consideration when and if possible; it was possible. Recommended even, if Bashir read Worf's deadpan expression correctly. Something Dax should be annoyed about actually, in Bashir's opinion, rather than him being concerned, which he wasn't concerned, not in the least.

"Yes, all right, I'll take this side," Bashir volunteered to make do with the larger of the two cabins.

"Oh, now, wait a minute," Kira was right there pulling rank as the shuttlecraft's First Officer.

"Captain!" she snapped in retort to his facetious comment.

"Captain," Bashir accepted. "And those are the Captain's quarters. It says so right there; read the sign."

"I see it!" Kira assured, somewhat difficult not to sprayed as it was in black paint across the cabin door.

"Someone in Engineering have a birthday party?" Dax asked O'Brien.

"Christmas, I think," he shrugged.

"And having your usual rowdy good time whichever -- yes, I realize it's the larger," Bashir argued back at Kira arguing with him. "If an extra square meter constitutes larger. That's the whole point."

"There's only one of you," she insisted.

"And two of you," Bashir agreed, meaning her and Dax. "In the meantime where do you suggest I put the equipment? Sleep with it? Which, yes, obviously, I am going to be sleeping with it. In the same damn room with it, rather than the same damn bunk, which is basically what it amounts to, or would amount to -- "

"In the cargo hold!" Kira directed.

"The cargo hold?" Bashir gaped. "I can't even stand upright in the cargo hold. What do you expect me to do? Spend a week crawling around on all fours?"

"You can stand upright," Kira nodded.

He was silent. She looked up at him, a flash of Bajoran fire glittering in her brown eyes. "You can stand upright," she repeated.

"Well, maybe you can," Bashir grinned. "But I know for a fact neither I nor Dax can even if both of us take our boots off and one of us takes our hair down."

"Never," Dax shook her tidy, bouffant twist of sable brown hair that assisted in inching her up an inch or so taller than Bashir's not quite six or so feet even in her flat-heeled boots.

"Well?" Bashir petitioned Kira.

"I'm thinking," she eyed Dax suspiciously while she thought. "You still read with the light on?"

"Well…" Dax had to tentatively admit it was somewhat awkward to read with the light off.

"Fine," Kira said. "I'll take this one. You two can fight over which one gets the lower bunk." 

She walked off leaving Bashir unable to believe his good or bad luck depending on the viewpoint. O'Brien to resume working on the toilet; it seeming the safest thing to do under the circumstances. And Dax to break the resulting silence with a smiling sigh and an offer of compromise, even though chances were it was not the compromise Worf had in mind. "We'll take turns."

"Sounds fair," Bashir grinned.

A huff punctured Worf's stoic mask. "That does not resolve the issue of the equipment."

"Worf has a point," Dax declared after carefully looking Worf over to determine his point.

"Yes, all right," Bashir gave the door of the cabin a couple of whacks to get it to open, stuck his head in and looked around. "What do you think?"

"Maybe," Dax agreed.

"Or maybe not," Bashir said.

"There's also the bridge," Dax reminded should the commissary prove insufficient.

"Where two of us get to sit and one of us gets to stand."

"Three of you," Dax smiled, lest they forget for the shuttle's initial run anyway they would be carrying two additional passengers: Anar and his son. "And you like to stand."

"Age has its privileges as well, I see," Bashir nodded, not to suggest at three hundred and fifty plus years, seven or ten lifetimes or so, she was old, because she wasn't old. She was no older than he was. The symbiont Dax she hosted was the ancient mariner among them.

"Yes, all right. It's reliable I guess is what matters really," Bashir moved on to leave it at that because in thinking of age, thinking of joined Trills and their symbionts, especially one named Dax, made him think of other things he really did not want to think about. "It is reliable, isn't it?" he verified with the Chief.

"Oh, yeah," O'Brien dismissed. "Someone had it out just yesterday, day before."

"I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news considering the engines are offline," Bashir walked forward to check out the feasibility of borrowing an area of the bridge; that's where he was. Not when Dax came looking for him after he returned from the _Tir, but later, yes, much later. When she first came looking for him he was in his cabin aboard the __Defiant, stretched out on his bunk, his hands clasped behind his head, thinking about things he did not want to think about and had been thinking about almost constantly the past three days. Hearing her call for him through the door, and subsequently over his com badge, ignoring her and allowing the computer to take care of detouring her completely from locating him, except in the case of an emergency._

There was no emergency apparently, for Dax left. Bashir could actually feel her presence fade away from the cabin door as she turned to walk off down the corridor. That was then, of course; future. Two hours or so from what was still now where the presence Bashir could feel behind him was the hefty, impatient one of the Chief's not Dax's as he stared over the forward console and side display panels.

"Look, what's the big deal about using the cargo hold until you get to where you're going and then you can set everything up just the way you want it?" O'Brien insisted, not that he had a clue where Bashir, or even he was going. He was just told to report for duty aboard the _Defiant, and report for duty he did. Figuring they'd tell him when he got there, which so far none of them had bothered to. But then, hey. He was only the Chief Engineer. Why should anyone go out of their way for him? He was an enlisted man, they were the elite, and right now he was talking to, or trying to talk to the elitist of the elite._

"Hello!" O'Brien prompted Bashir otherwise known as his best friend apparentlybored with talking to him already. Well, O'Brien had news for him. Doctor Julian Bashir was no more tired of, or bored by, Chief Miles Edward O'Brien than O'Brien was sick and tired of him.

"I heard you," Bashir answered. "The problem is in four days it's entirely possible I can break down Janice's chemical compound saving us all a hassle and a great deal of time…none of which is possible if I don't have a lab."

"Use the damn lab in the Infirmary!"

To the contrary, Bashir didn't want to go anywhere near the Infirmary if only because he knew he'd go no where near the lab, certainly not to spend the next four days conducting innumerable analyses on some cream. He stared at the wall displays. "It's probably also a good idea -- "

"They work," O'Brien interjected. "The system works."

"Yes, well, it's not a question of something working, it's a question of reliability -- similar to the warp engines," he eyed O'Brien, the reasons behind the Chief's blustering, boisterous attitude not escaping him. "You know, at some point you're just going to have to put it behind you; the hearing, everything, and move on."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. Interesting the way he said it, put it. Like it was a year ago rather than an hour.

"I realize you're angry," Bashir said. "Still angry, I should say. Though I must admit I don't really understand why you're angry at me, or for that matter with any of us."

"Uh, huh. Well, who…" O'Brien wondered, or started to.

"When the truth of the matter is," Bashir said, "you should get down on your knees and thank us -- or at least thank us," he agreed as O'Brien looked at him short of socking him.

"Beginning with who?" O'Brien finished that time to wait. "You?"

"Well, certainly beginning with Captain Sisko," Bashir activated the display. It was reasonable. A little slower in responding than he was accustomed to, but then the shuttle had to be what? Twenty or thirty years old? A dinosaur when she had once been an archetype with her warp drive engines.

"And ending with? Who?" O'Brien was continuing to bluster. "Odo? The bastard prosecuted me."

"He was ordered to prosecute you," Bashir replied. "We all have our orders…and, no, we don't always like our orders, but follow our orders we do…something you apparently forgot, which is why you found yourself in the scrape you found yourself in."

The Chief was just looking at him again. Bashir smiled. Not to be callous, simply just to smile. "My orders, for example," he offered, "are to spend the next two weeks conducting every practical environmental study you care to think of in hopes of following in the footsteps of Janice and recreate her cream.

"Of course," he nodded, "it really is much more involved than simply attempting to reconstruct something already in existence. It's figuring out how it even came to be in existence. The environment, for example, it was created in. The physical confines and parameters of her experiment; the controls she had set in place to prevent contamination. The microorganisms she could keep out, and the ones that even I couldn't begin to.

"Actually," he said, "the very idea that the ointment is colored some ghastly purple color suggests to me Janice was rather limited in her ability to isolate one experiment from the other and in desperation to keep her studies organized resorted to some sort of primitive color coding. It certainly is the only reason I can think of for the horrid pigment.

"But, then again," he admitted, "that may just be my own bigotry, if you will. My own aversion. Chances are I can't think of too many things I would like to see dressed in purple, certainly not anything I might care to smear all over my body.

"And, yes," he said, "I suppose it would be simpler if I could just ask Janice for her formula; if she knows her formula, how she created her ointment, other than by accident. The fact that Anar's here asking us to pursue her studies for her suggests she doesn't know. As, I dare suggest, knowing Janice, as little as I do know her, I highly doubt if she was religious in documenting her progress; I'm certain she wasn't. She just doesn't seem the type.

"In the meantime," he said, winding down to finish, "I have left some samples for Keiko to have a look at, out of simple curiosity if nothing else. She is a botanist. And one thing I am certain of Janice's ointment, or cream, or paste, really, does have a botanical base."

"Huh?" O'Brien just said after all of that.

"Quite all right," Bashir's hand clapped his shoulder, "you don't have to understand. What you have to do is bring us and Shakaar safely back to Dyaan IX and return to secure us after Kira decides what should be the appropriate rendezvous…Both of these naturally after we deposit Damar, or Dukat, or whoever it is we truly are concerned about, safely at the Cardassian border…Those are your orders. I'm sure Captain Sisko must have told you. It really wouldn't make any sense for him to leave it to me to tell you. I'm not a bridge officer, after all. Hardly a bridge officer…At least not that kind of bridge officer," he grinned at Dax. "Though I do like to decorate them occasionally."

"It wouldn't be the same without you," she swore.

"As it is I," Worf added to that with an accompanying huff of disgust, "as First Officer of the _Defiant who should be apprising Chief O'Brien of his duty assignment and also the presence of Shakaar Adon and his son."_

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, I had an idea you were standing here for a reason… not aboard the _Defiant, of course," he hurried to clarify, scurrying to worm his way past Dax with a sheepish "Whoops, I'm in trouble now."_

"No, you're not in trouble," Dax followed him out of the shuttle into the bay quite literally crowded with their equipment.

"Well, I certainly didn't mean to usurp Worf's position," Bashir insisted. "As First Officer of the _Defiant where else would he be except on the __Defiant? I just simply meant it had crossed my mind wondering why he was aboard the Ark -- which, yes," he acknowledged, "is aboard the __Defiant, isn't it? Or at least currently docked in its main shuttlebay -- "_

"Julian," Dax stopped him.

"No, really," he insisted. "How the hell did I know no one had troubled to tell the Chief, not only about our mission, but about Shakaar Adon?"

She looked at him, he nodded a moment later. "Heck. How the heck did I know? Sorry, but I'm just a little nervous about all of this -- aren't you nervous?" he wondered.

"Nervous?" she said.

He nodded again with a rub of his hand across the back of his neck. The motion suggesting he was mildly nervous about something though he denied it. "Well, perhaps not nervous, you're right -- what do you want to do with all of this? I suspect the cargo hold is going to have to be it for now."

"Yes," Dax suspected that also.   
"Probably the best idea considering not only do we have two additional passengers, but who our passengers are,"

Bashir leaned heavily on the release to open the hatchway. Which was all right he supposed though it might be a little difficult for them to gain quick access during flight should quick access be necessary.

"I believe there's an interior entrance as well." Dax had faith in the quality of Starfleet's design engineers.

"Probably that door aft of our commissary," Bashir stepped into the cargo hold with a grin around the expansive compartment, the top of his head no where near close to brushing the ceiling. "This isn't half bad actually. To think I spent all that time complaining for naught."

"You like complaining," Dax passed in the variety of hardware necessary to recreate his scanners, bioregenerative and stasis fields, many of which he could barely lift with two hands compared to her consistent ability to lift them with one; up over her head if she so felt like it. Swing them around one or twice just to prove a point.

But then she could also swing a bat'telh with the ease, controlled grace and strength of any Klingon; better than some. Her husband Worf occasionally, though admittedly infrequently, among the ranks of the defeated rather than the champion in their host of holographic reenactments they loved to reenact together, at each other's side like the upstanding, outstanding Klingon couple that they were. 

Actually about the only thing Dax had yet to try was traveling the gauntlet. Seeing how many steps she could take with those painstiks ramming into her every few seconds or so. That was probably scheduled for next week.

Bashir was sorry about that; not really. Because next week, all next week, and most of the following, Dax would be with him doing all sorts of mundane and dreary scientific things. Proving herself a Klingon would just have to wait, along with her inevitable trip to the Infirmary to have herself patched back together. Continuously failing in her appreciation that to be a Klingon, a real Klingon, she was supposed to let that dislocated arm heal in the precise grotesque position it was. Surely by this time her ongoing display of weakness had to be troubling Mister Worf, gnawing at him, like it troubled and gnawed at Bashir, simply in a different way.

"Rather difficult to believe I once killed a Jem'Hadar sentry with my own two hands," Bashir took a needed break and deep breath. "Must have been one of my more arrogant periods -- either that or I was simply desperate," he grinned at Dax looking at him curiously. "Does seem that way sometimes, doesn't it? I mean about my liking to complain for the sake of complaining?"

"I think I missed something somewhere," she admitted.

"No, not really," Bashir shook his head. "Actually, all I was going to say -- "

"You can have the top bunk," she nodded.

"What?" Bashir said. "Oh, yes, thank you. That's rather generous of you. Particularly since I was just about to say -- " he paused.

Dax laughed. She smiled first and then laughed. 

"Very clever," Bashir said and probably would have thrown something at her except he didn't have anything around handy to throw; nothing soft and harmless except for possibly himself. "Some psychology friend of yours teach you that?"

"It works," she shrugged.

"Guided response," Bashir agreed, "I guess it does. Better on some than on others."

"Better on those who really aren't listening," she hinted.

"No, I was listening. Simply more to my back. Which out of sheer respect for I just may have to take you up on your offer -- of the lower bunk," he grinned. "Since after this I'm not quite sure I'll have the strength to make it to the upper."

"It's four days," Dax nodded. "I'm sure your back will be fine by then."

So it was. What was he thinking? What was Worf thinking for that matter? What was she? He knew what he was thinking, had been thinking since long before their arrangement to meet in the lab in ten minutes had stretched past thirty and Dax still hadn't shown to offer her opinion as to what equipment she felt they should take. A particular data padd burned like plasma in the inside breast pocket of Bashir's field uniform. He wasn't even quite sure why he took it, more terrified by the prospect of wanting to find out.

"Come in," Dax had called out in answer to the buzzing at her door as she changed out of her standard jumpsuit into the more practical field suit. Pulling her T-shirt on and clipping her hair back in its neat, professional style, she walked out of her bedroom to Bashir entertaining himself with wandering his way through her psychiatric anthropological study she had been working on. 

"That was trusting of you, considering," he reminded her Sisko had not yet declared them officially rid of the Threat Force that had terrorized the station, and hence he could have been anyone.

"I knew it was you." Dax disengaged the program with her own clever reminder of what he had called her morbid compilation of barbaric shaming acts in an effort to find a cultural fingerprint behind Lange's vicious attack."My diary."

"I never said I wouldn't review the assessment for you," Bashir's smile turned on the T-shirt that on her looked simply smashing, though perhaps a little cool considering they didn't know the climate of Anar's world. If it had a climate, or for that matter seasons. "Is that it?"

Dax glanced down on her short-sleeved shirt with its mock turtleneck collar. "The duffel," Bashir offered.

Dax glanced over her shoulder for her small duffel waiting on the floor. "I think we also had a discussion about that," she nodded.

"Hardly Bajor Prime," Bashir agreed. "Simply the outer colonies, rather than Cardassia."

"There's easier ways for you to get a tan," Dax returned to her bedroom for her jacket.

"Easier ways, and far better places…" Bashir eyed the console. "Though I seem to recall on our last holiday to Risa Worf sabotaged the weather grid in a jealous snit and the resort was beset by zealots threatening eternal damnation to the scoundrels and knaves… If there's a sane being left in the galaxy for their own safety they've developed acute agoraphobia by this point…"

"You had a great time on Risa," Dax returned to her living area to find him checking his hair in his reflection in the console. 

"Of course I did," Bashir straightened up with his grin. "I always have a great time no matter where I go, or what I do…but then what do I care about some past association of Curzon's…or for that matter eternal damnation?" he retrieved her duffel for her. "Seriously, is this really all you're bringing? For two weeks? Close enough."

"I really do like to travel light." 

"That would be the word," Bashir exited with her. "If not explain why you left me to take care of carting all our equipment aboard the _Defiant."_

"Ha, ha," she said.

"Well, perhaps not cart exactly," he admitted. "No, we have subordinates to do that for us -- for the moment, anyway."

"I wouldn't know. I was too busy," Dax entered the turbolift; Worf approaching from the opposite direction halted in front of their quarters with a sigh. She didn't even see him. Bashir did, and he had all he could do to resist this incredible urge he had to wave hello and subsequently goodbye. The door to the lift closed, taking care of the urge for him and he settled back into his comfortable smile for Dax.

"Doing?" he asked. "Not to say your hair doesn't look its usual lovely, the same as mine, but I still managed to keep our date."

"What date was this?" Dax verified, having been married to Worf for the past several months, and certainly extensively involved with the _Enterprise transplant for the year or so prior, if not completely unable to recall when she had ever dated Bashir, as in never._

"The lab?" Bashir jostled her short-term memory. "Five minutes late I said all right. Ten, I said this is becoming absurd. Fifteen, I just took care of everything myself assuming you were either dead or in the shower. Either way once finished with ordering our equipment aboard, I couldn't see any reason to bother about a medical override and so I just rang. Presuming if you were in and not dead you would eventually answer the door."

"I was in the lab," Dax nodded.

"How odd," Bashir thought about that. "So was I. Strange we didn't bump into each other."

"The science lab," Dax nodded.

He smiled. "Well, that explains it. I was in the medical. Perhaps we should have clarified where to meet, though I'm not sure why. This is a medical expedition."

"Science," she shook her head.

"Medical," he assured.

"Science," she shook her head.

"Boring in any event," Bashir prophesized. "I don't suppose we could convince Kira to sabotage the weather grid -- if they have a weather grid. At the very least inspire Anar to reveal himself to be a political and/or religious zealot not only his dastardly younger brother, steal the runabout and make off to Risa to work on our tans?"

"I'm sure he is a zealot," Dax pivoted off the turbolift smack into Worf.

"Is that a yes?" Bashir wondered.

She was too busy smiling up into her husband's family crest to bother answering him. "There you are."

"Yes," Worf said.

Dax shrugged, tucking her arm through his and planting a kiss on his cheek. "Five minutes I said all right. Ten, I knew you were aboard the _Defiant and just let Julian carry the bags."_

"But only because I was conveniently there," Bashir maintained his stride abreast of Dax. 

"Yes," Worf said.

"As I insist unless we are going to Risa you probably should have packed more than a change of hair clips." Bashir and his grin stepped aside in a polite gesture for Dax to precede him through the hatch to board the _Defiant, accidentally cutting off Worf with all due apologies. "Oh, sorry, I didn't see you."_

"I knew there was something I forgot," Dax agreed.

"Your hair clips?" Bashir smiled up at Worf stepping back with a huff over having his toes stepped on.

"My bathing suit," Dax said.

"Oh," Bashir paused but regrouped quickly. "Forgot mine as well. Quite all right. I'm sure we'll make do -- " He stopped short at the sight of the Ark, from there proceeding on to complain.

That was then, of course, as this was now. And right now in the moments before they embarked on their way to escorting the _Tir to the border Dax was shaking her head at him, rousing him from his momentary daydream as they sat in the cargo hold of the Ark._

CHAPTER FOUR

"Hello?" Dax said.

"Yes, of course," Bashir answered. "Sorry, but I was just thinking…about all this equipment," he agreed with a discouraged look around. "Somewhat of a duplication of effort."

Dax wasn't concerned. "This way you get to play doctor to your heart's content."

"Yes," Bashir said. "And you get to do what? Play mad scientist? To borrow a frequent criticism of yours this is supposed to be a team effort, not a competition."

"We're a team," she promised with a pat on his shoulder but only because she wanted to get back to work stuffing in their equipment, from there to the bridge and of course, Mister Worf.

"Yes," Bashir said tightly. They were a team all right. A unit. A matched pair. Inconvenienced by the untimely addition of Mister Worf; her data log burned like plasma 

  


again in the breast pocket of his jacket. "Darling, listen to me…" he carelessly, unconsciously blurted out to abruptly stop. She was looking at him, he frowned. "Did I just say darling?"

"Yes."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, it is a rather archaic term of endearment, that's true. Fairly harmless and meaningless by now; I wouldn't be concerned -- are you concerned?" he checked. "Angry, more accurately?"

"No," she decided with a smile and a shake of her head. "Curious as to why you would even bother."

"Bother about what? You?"

She looked at him; he understood. "Yes, of course, Mister Worf; for the benefit of Mister Worf, no less. You're right. Why would I bother? Particularly when he's not about to even know I'm trying to offend him?"

"I think that's my point," she nodded.

"Quite, and chances are mine is, is that what you think I'm doing?"

That's what she knew he was doing. Bored by this time in their lives with his childish pranks designed to get a rise out of Worf, equally determined not to rise, and therefore it was probably reasonable to suggest chances were Dax was equally tired of and bored by Worf's predictable reaction: an exhausted sigh. Why shouldn't she be tired? Neither of them were really taking her into consideration at all in their ongoing battle of wit versus will.

"Yes, well," Bashir said now that she had managed to shame him without having to remove or mutilate some vital organ of his, "actually, I was going say…well, perhaps not anything of true consequence, really," he admitted. "But yes, I was going to say something."

"What?" Dax asked.

"Oh," Bashir said, somewhat surprised she wanted to hear. "Well, nothing really. Other than if I seem…well, I wouldn't say put out exactly by even having to be bothered with any of this, it's probably because I have an idea of my own I've been toying with; idea's a good description. Hypothesis is probably better even though I haven't had much time to work on developing it -- which I would like to do," he said, hearing himself hesitate, feeling himself swallow, hard, wondering if she noticed. "Have the time; find the time; spend it. The other thing I would really like is for you to take a look over my theory, I guess you could call it; express an opinion. I do value your opinion even if I do sometimes challenge it."

"I can do that," Dax agreed.

He had this outrageously insane desire to kiss her, right there in the cargo hold, damn whoever was or wasn't about to take offense. "Oh," he said. "All right. It's not in any comprehensible format at the moment, as I said. But, yes, perhaps I can find some time to work on it between now and the time we arrive at wherever it is we're going…"

Two hours from then he was aboard the _Tir, thirty minutes away from being on his way back._

Forty-five minutes from that point he was lying on his bunk, his hands tucked under his head listening to Dax give up on trying to find him for now.An hour later he was sitting down at his desk in his office aboard the _Defiant's Infirmary with a rub of his face. Dax's data padd containing her anthropological study resting on the console for little reason other than inspiration; it was still another minute or two before he finally engaged the console. "Medical analysis."_

_"Subject?" the computer requested._

Bashir took a breath. "Jadzia Dax. Preliminary analysis. Compare and contrast the number of injuries sustained and requiring medical intervention regardless of method of treatment, cause, or severity; percentage of increase or decrease to the prior year and so forth in descending order."

_"Computing…" the system complied. __"Preliminary analysis suggests a thirteen percent decrease ininjuries sustained to datein comparison to the prior four quarters."_

"There's something to be said for war and separation after all, isn't there?" Bashir agreed.

_"Records show a 112 percent increase in injuries sustained Federation year 2374," the computer reported; Bashir stared at the console._

"On screen," he directed.

_"On screen," the display lit up._

"Continue," Bashir reminded impatiently, watching the lengthy listing begin to scroll.

_"Comparison Federation year 2373 shows a forty-three percent increase to the prior four quarters."_

"How much of that increase is represented subsequent to Commander Worf's arrival?"

_"By average…94.4 percent."_

"Damn," Bashir closed his eyes briefly. "And the number of years I can expect to find myself interned convicted of first or second degree manslaughter? Whichever is applicable to crimes of the heart."

_"There is no provision in Federation law for emotional distress as a mitigating factor to murder for the Terran species," the computer enlightened him. __"Mandatory internment for conviction of manslaughter in the first degree is no less than twenty-five Federation years to life." _

"But if I were a Klingon?" Bashir snapped.

_"The Federation has no jurisdiction over the Klingon Empire or any affiliated colony."_

"Not even the one in Starfleet uniform?" he insisted.

_"Reevaluating your parameters…" the computer agreed. __"Federation guidelines would require mandatory explanation for such action and subsequent formal reprimand. Court-martial is probable; expulsion possible; mandatory in the instance of the defined victim being a superior officer. Additional legal requirements may be imposed. Criminal insanity is a relative term. Federation parameters cannot be made to incorporate those of the Klingon species. Accurate diagnosis is not possible at this time; appropriate medical intervention has not been defined; anthropological and social studies are ongoing._

_"Current statistics show a 1.3 in 3 chance of dying by violent act or cause before age sixty compared to the galactical average of 1.1 in 1,000 overall, suggesting social/cultural environment and structure to be keynote. Self-mutilation and torture is standard from early adolescence. Abuse of alcohol is prevalent among both sexes. Ritual cannibalism is reported to exist. All practices are known to be cause or contributing factors to a number of mental or physiological disorders, congenital or degenerative, in eighty-seven percent of known Humanoid species studied; fifty-seven percent of known alien lifeforms. Developed tolerance is keynote on a superficial level only. Substantial evidence supports shortened life expectancy. Mutations are rare, though documented. Common risks are birth defects, chronic depression and progressive deterioration and disruption at the cellular level of the brain; frequently in the areas of associative and/or motor function. Acute synoptic failure is not unknown and can be widespread. Do you wish to proceed?"_

"With my medical analysis of Jadzia," Bashir had heard enough otherwise, stubbornly refusing to let Worf off the hook simply because he had been raised by Humans since early childhood.

_"Compiling…" the computer said. __"Jadzia Dax is a Host entity identifier for the gastropod lifeform Dax. Species: Trill. Genus: Amoeboid; intelligent; advanced. Classification: Alien Gastropoda Symbiont. Gender classification: Androgen. Host Species: Trill. Classification: Transalien. Gender classification: Transandrogen._

_"Preliminary analysis reveals the Host to be a healthy transandrogen of eight Federation years with multiple integrated synoptic patterns and memory engrams common to joined Trills. Anatomical Structure External: female, humanoid. Internal: female, integrated humanoid-gastropod. Approximate chronological age is thirty-two Federation years. Height is +.2 average. Weight is -.1 by comparison. Strength is +3 average. Insufficient data exists to determine if the Host is functioning within acceptable parameters but is doubtful with optimum performance unable to be considered. Further analysis is recommended to determine if cause is psychiatric or physiological._

_"Probable: Chronic Emotional Distress Disorder, unrelieved. Traumatic Stress Syndrome, unrelieved. Dietary. Recommended course of action: Behavior modification, anger management, counseling, nutritional review._

_"Possible: Acute Clinical Depression. Memory Repression. Bipolar Disorder. Early Rejection Syndrome. Recurrent Rejection Syndrome. Recommended course of action: Complete medical examination in conjunction with qualified Symbiosis Commission physicians. Insufficient data exists for appropriate diagnosis by Starfleet Medical Personnel. Margin for error is unacceptable._

_"Rare: Multiple Personality Disorder. Schizophrenia. Neuro Integration Failure. Neuro Integration Rejection. Alien Possession. Recommended course of action: Complete medical examination in conjunction with qualified Symbiosis Commission physicians. Insufficient data exists for appropriate diagnosis by Starfleet Medical Personnel. Margin for error is unacceptable._

_"Summary: Extensive analysis is required for appropriate determination. Current evidence supports the Host to be suicidal witha 1 in 3 chance of death by violent cause or act overall. Immediate crisis intervention is recommended. Do you wish to proceed?"_

"Yes," Bashir was a far cry away from being relieved with hearing his suspicions recited back to him. The sticking point, how immediate crisis intervention needed to be versus how immediate it could be when he was relying on a structured detailing of supported facts to persuade Jadzia into even agreeing to listen to him. She'd never listen to him otherwise, it was doubtful if she'd listen to him even then, necessitating a change in the course of action. One possibility he wasn't particularly fond of pursuing was ordering her relieved of all duties and personal freedom until a complete medical examination could be performed.

Another option he was adamantly opposed to pursuing was involving the prestigious Symbiosis Commission. He didn't trust the Institute. Rightfully suspecting the faculty to be comprised of little more than fanatical zealots, obsessed with the symbiont lifeform. The Hosts little more than a commodity, generally expendable as the truth be known how better than fifty percent of the humanoid Trill population was capable of being joined rather than the elite few.

It was one of the galaxy's dark, little secrets that had almost cost Jadzia her life. Necessitating Captain Sisko's threats of exposure before securing the Commission's cooperation in straightening out the mess they had created in their bungled attempt to suppress Dax's retained knowledge of a prior unsuitable host Joran Belar. A musical impresario turned maniacal murderer. It remained very much a question in Bashir's mind who was exactly responsible for that chain of events as well.

On the other hand if Bashir found Jadzia with a kut'luch in her hand pointed at her chest, he would have to forego taking the time to detail anything and immediate crisis intervention would truly be immediate. Even though at +3 the average strength of a Trill placed her about +5 his strength, or roughly equal to the strength of a Klingon the powerful, commanding size of Mister Worf heads over most and at least a head above everyone; those holographic reenactments certainly paid off in developing Jadzia's muscle density.

Bashir would believe that when he saw it and he certainly did not care to see it at all, recalling without effort Worf's ability to go round after round with Jem'Hadar after Jem'Hadar on a remote Dominion controlled asteroid, almost two years ago now. There was no way Jadzia could ever hope to hold her own against Worf outside the holosuites in stark reality.

In contrast, what Bashir might like to see was Worf attempting to go one on one with the Cardassian giant Tan; Bashir didn't think so. Towering in excess of eight feet in the air, truly heads above everyone else, with the attitude and strength of a Cardassian to match any Klingon's including Mister Worf's. Bashir was half-tempted to see what he could do about striking up a friendship with the sons of Gul Dukat; he'd settle for Jadzia getting a Klingon divorce; if Klingons divorced; he was sure they divorced. Quark, the station's Ferengi entertainment King and entrepreneur was divorced from the petite Klingon bombshell Grilka, one of the few truly beautiful Klingon women Bashir had ever seen.

Quark was also the star-crossed lover of Natima, one of the few truly beautiful Cardassian women Bashir had ever seen. Quark got around for an ugly little humanoid with a pronounced bald four-lobed head, oversized earlobes and caustic personality. 

His bumbling brother Rom got around as well. Married for the past year to the sultry Bajoran siren Leeta, Quark's principal Dabo hostess and former love interest of Bashir's. If Bashir had the time he'd sit around wondering what he was doing wrong; he didn't have the time. Leeta was a former love interest, Jadzia he was in love with. He knew this. He had decided this several hours ago now, simply a matter of how to tell her commingled with telling her everything else. 

Ten hours after the computer first recited his primary suspicion among its lengthy list of possible, probable, and rare explanations as the root behind Jadzia's suspected illness Bashir knew he was right, simply a matter of proving it to Jadzia's satisfaction. A phenomenon equivalent to alien possession. The invasive intruder: Curzon. Dax's former host prior to Jadzia for eighty years. Ambitious, powerful, carousing, Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire known by most as the Old Man. Jadzia's one-time personal nemesis, instrumental in having her expelled from the Symbiosis Commission, and then in an unprecedented and uncharacteristic act of repentant remorse, instrumental in overseeing her readmission. Insuring Jadzia's place in Commission history as the only initiate ever to be granted readmission once expelled; Bashir knew why, and it had nothing to do with unrequited love. Well over the century mark at the time of his death in 2367, eight years dead Curzon was still refusing to lie down. After eight years, Jadzia utterly and completely under his influence and control, her identity submerged and submissive to his; damn the Commission's earlier attempt to squash Belar, Curzon managing do what they had failed to do, and that was squash Jadzia.

Bashir stood up in an effort to clear his head of what had to be close to raging paranoia; he couldn't clear it. Curzon was proven not to let go easily when his transferred memories refused to let go of Odo and life. Curzon wanted to live. He did not want to spend eternity as collective cellular slime: Dax.

Jadzia's emotional Achilles heel proven to be her inability to disassociate herself from the lives of Dax's previous hosts. Not their learning, their teachings, their wisdom, their lives. Jadzia was Torias in love all over again the moment she saw his former wife Nilani, willing to face mandatory exile from Trill society for the victimless crime of daring to go back rather than forward. But then the entire point of the Trill-symbiont joining was to go forward, never back. That included Curzon and his Klingons whether the Ambassador liked it or not.

The Ambassador obviously did not like it. He married Jadzia to Worf, a Klingon, probably only to prove a point; his point. For as much as the Symbiosis Commission might frown on reassociation, Curzon was by far their most celebrated Host, a former commissioner. Dax was one of the oldest continuously joined symbionts around. Their union signified everything the Commission stood for; prestige. It wasn't likely they would frown too loudly down on Jadzia following in the footsteps of Curzon rather than him obediently following along behind hers despite her premiere distinctions in a host of sciences. What was so intriguing about science put alongside blood ale, heart of targ, blood oaths and bat'telhs? If there was a root to Bashir 's potential for raging paranoia it was blind jealousy and everything that went along with it; rage, hatred, magnifying what were legitimate concerns.

Bashir was in the cargo hold of the Ark bringing a semblance of order to the heap of equipment in preparation of beginning some initial focused screening of Janice's purple cream while the Infirmary's computer labored away at dissecting Jadzia's extensive medical record. Separating cause from reason and reason without cause for her numerable injuries sustained over the last two years. Bashir could have set up his screenings of Janice's cream in the Infirmary as well; he needed a break from the Infirmary. Dax was in her and Worf's cabin having an argument with Worf that Bashir knew absolutely nothing about, even though he was the principal topic of discussion.

Julian failed to put in an appearance aboard the _Defiant's bridge. That concerned Dax. Primarily because she knew he was concerned about something since returning from the __Tir. Lange's revised prognosis?_

Lange living on Cardassia?

Lange living with Dukat on Cardassia?

Dax ran through every conceivable possibility she could think of. It all came back to Lange. Simply what about Janice Lange? Julian occasionally had difficulty letting go where he didn't want to let go and had to. Dax imagined he was concerned about leaving Lange's care to Tracy Sorge.

She imagined he was still greatly disturbed by the prognosis of fifteen percent irreparable brain damage Lange suffered as a result of her assault that would relegate her to spending the remainder of her life borderline normal rather than maintain her classification of advanced superior intelligent Human: congenital. Not genetically engineered, re-mastered, or enhanced, which Julian was. Illegally so, but still everything Bashir wanted to be, he was, including a great admirer of everything superior and all things beautiful. Lange was both, had been. A striking compilation of beauty, brilliance, mystery, astounding naïveté and befuddlement under a crowning mass of Klingon-like hair.

"Running away to Cardassia?" Dax mused, picturing Bashir packing his bag and waiting his chance to run away to Cardassia. Perhaps not as Lange's lover, but certainly as her doctor with full intentions of combining his skills with Sorge's background in genetics to regenerate Lange's destroyed brain cells and bring her back to who she had been.

The picture didn't fit. Dax really couldn't see Bashir risking life, limb, or career to re-master Lange's brain regardless of how disturbed he was, particularly when he didn't approve of genetic enhancement, only when it came to himself. Recognizing and appreciating the staggering risks of creating monsters, madness, and mayhem, and hence why it was illegal, and had been for three centuries.

"Huh?" Kira looked over from her station at the helm to say.

"Sorry," Dax smiled. "Talking to myself."

"It's getting late," Kira nodded, thinking about duty rotations, the severely limited engineering staff sure to face an extensive debriefing upon their return, and even then Sisko was sure to keep his fingers crossed.

She was thinking about the absolute minimum flight crew needed compared to the skeleton crew currently manning the _Defiant. The one that just happened to include in its entirety her, Dax, O'Brien and Worf, in an effort to preserve and protect Shakaar from the galaxy finding out about his outlaw side of the family until it absolutely had to find out; which it would. Probably much sooner than all would have preferred. It just had a way of working out that way. Once a door was opened it was open regardless of how long it had been shut._

"You'll have to figure something out on the way home, that's true," Dax agreed. Meaning Worf and O'Brien would since she and Kira would be taking the Ark packed with equipment, Julian, and two Shakaars for a week's long stay on the unheard of planet, planetoid, or asteroid Dyaan IX of Bajor's outer colonies.

"We will." Kira meant we, the same as Dax truly meant we, since they really were we. A team, a unit, a crew.

"I wonder where Julian is," Dax admitted with a look around.

"Oh, please," Kira groaned. About as inclined to leave Bashir in charge of the helm, navigation, Ops, or the Prophets forbid, the bridge, as she was inclined to beg Rom to let her be the one to finish working on the Ark's toilet. From there figure out why they couldn't get the engines back on line when someone just took the shuttle out yesterday for its monthly saunter around the upper pylons to ensure it remained in perfect working order despite its looks to the contrary, just in case they needed it, which they never needed it until now. Now that they did, its engines were offline. It was just another one of those things that always seemed to just work out that way.

Dax sighed. Not a heavy sigh, just a sigh, nothing to do with anything really. Not the Ark or Bashir. "Actually, Julian is a reasonably good navigator and pilot," she said.

"He's not focused," Kira vetoed splitting the duty assignments five ways rather than four.

"As in a dip," O'Brien added. Back in the thick of things, he might as well be back in the spirit of things, and it was good to have him back.

"Well…" Dax smiled. Julian was a dip that was true. Or he could be. A study in contrasts himself. A confirmed ne'er-do-well, remarkably brilliant and astoundingly naïve.

"You…you…" Kira was pointing to her and Worf. "Four hours."

Worf huffed his usual huff. Kira looked her usual look at him. "I am the First Officer of the _Defiant," he reminded._

"So?" Kira said.

Worf huffed again. "After two years I cannot say I am comfortable with the informality of this crew as compared to the _Enterprise."_

"Crew," Kira looked at Dax grimacing already.

"Well…" Dax said, knowing it was probably more being called the crew that got under Kira's skin rather than they were operating without a crew to speak of and therefore there really was very little reason for Worf to be so concerned about protocol? She eyed Worf not wanting to correct him in public for being stodgy.

"You got that right," Kira turned back to Worf without Dax having to say a word.

"It moved," O'Brien hinted to Worf sitting stiffly in the Commander's chair opposing Kira's intolerant expression. "The _Enterprise moved. Your lives -- listen to me your. __Our lives depended upon everyone's 'formality'. The station doesn't move."_

"Only once," Dax nodded in support, referencing the station's sole flight log from its orbit above Bajor to the opening of the Bajoran worm hole. A distance the Chief could spit across.

"Yeah, huh?" O'Brien grinned. "And kick in those thrusters to move it again and we'll see just how quick everyone snaps, and I mean snaps to attention.We're talking about moving something the size of the capital city of Bajor."

"Which is why Benjamin doesn't move it too often," Dax smiled at Worf in an effort to cajole him into surrendering since Kira wasn't.

Neither was Worf. "The _Defiant moves," he informed Kira._

"Oh, God," O'Brien buried himself in transferring control of navigation to his Ops console.

"Our cargo is extremely sensitive," Worf reminded Kira needlessly. "The threat of Klingon interest is real -- "

"There's only four of us!" she cut to the quick with a snap. 

"Aboard the bridge, yes, this is true," Worf agreed finally.

"Well?" Kira nodded. "Well?"

Worf sighed. "It is also wise that the crew be equal to our alert status. Your suggestion of a four hour relief is reasonable."

"Thank you!"

Worf turned to the Chief. "No…no…" O'Brien tried to stop him before he said it.

He said it. "You have the bridge. Protocol mandates as Bajoran liaison to the Federation Major Kira cannot assume First Officer of the _Defiant if a senior Federation bridge officer is available -- "_

"I'm not an officer!"

"A relative term," Worf assured. "Commander Dax and I shall return at 0600 at which time you and Major Kira will be relieved for four hours. We will reevaluate our status eight hours after you and Major Kira resume duty."

"I really wouldn't take it personally," Dax mentioned thoughtfully to Kira as she passed to follow Worf.

"I don't take it personally," Kira said, muttering something about Worf not taking it personally when he found out Anar and Sian would be joining them on the bridge at just about the time she and the Chief returned.

"I didn't hear that," Dax agreed.

"You heard me," Kira assured.

Dax nodded. "If we confine them to their cabin for the duration of the trip home, who's available to make sure they remain in their cabin? You're right. I think we've been down that road once before; with Lange and Dukat…

"Imagine that," she joined Worf at the turbolift with a smile, "he really is like his father, after all."

Worf huffed. His fifth or sixth huff, Dax would soon lose count. "His father was interned for two years in a Federation prison. If I see the comparison, I do not see the compliment, or the humor."

CHAPTER FIVE

The terse reply surprised Dax having to think for a moment to know who Worf was talking about. Bashir's father was just recently paroled after spending time on a Federation prison colony. A small Human with big dreams, the internment of Richard Bashir had been an agreement with the Federation. The charge? The illegal procurement of genetic enhancement for his mentally challenged son when Julian was only six years old. 

A secret for twenty-five years. A crime whose statute of limitations for prosecution had technically run out except for the fact Julian was a Starfleet officer.Julian could have/should have lost his career; he didn't. That powers that be were in an amicable mood that day, much thanks to Benjamin, willing to strike a bargain with the small-time confidence man. Bashir got to keep his pips, his father mandated to serve a 

  


two year sentence on a minimally secured prison farm for the violation and an assortment of other minor infractions.

Anon Dukat's father was _the Gul Dukat of the Alpha Quadrant. A dangerous man if Dukat was nothing else. Currently interned in an ultra-maximum security Federation prison facility where he had been for the last year awaiting trial and eventual transference to the notorious Elba II where he would spend his life, if the galaxy ended up having their say, with the rest of the criminally insane. The charge? War crimes. A career spanning more than twenty-five years, with the advent of the Federation-Dominion war that he initiated, the blood of new millions dripping off his hands._

Either, or, neither was what Dax was talking about. She was talking about the aspect of Dukat that had him fancying himself the ultimate lover beside his avocation as the quadrant's chief executioner. In any event difficult to keep track of whenever he had soiled the station with his presence, impossible to tie down.A characteristic his son Anon exhibited if he exhibited no other. The question remained who Worf was talking about? Father and son Bashir, or father and son Dukat? Offhand, Dax couldn't think of anyone else. Benjamin's father was a chef, for example. Perhaps a little cantankerous, hardly a criminally minded man, small or large.

"Julian?" she ventured, several seconds into the turbolift's misleadingly pleasant ride. Worf looked at her; she smiled again. "I was talking about Anon Dukat."

It got worse from there. Worf made it worse, not her, and not "Julian."

Dax said Bashir's name in challenge that time, cocky, angrily.Her face in Worf's, almost touching his as they stood in the close confines of their cabin aboard the _Defiant. Worf huffed. "He insults you," was his defense._

Insults her. No, Julian did not insult her. He teased her, yes. Tormented her occasionally. Flirted with her. All of it harmless, all of it Julian. Hardly serious, or malicious.Something Worf chose not to believe, as he apparently chose to forget regardless of what Julian did, did not do, plotted to, she, Dax, had married Worf, not Julian.

Dax was tempted to tell Worf that; she decided to ignore him. With three hours and thirty-five minutes remaining to her four hour recess, the lower bunk and sleep seemed much more appealing than continuing some absurd argument over the truth behind Bashir's actions and intent. Ordering lights out, she wrenched herself out of her field jacket, stripped off her T-shirt down to her cropped athletic top that she hated to wear and had to wear out in the field solely due to her anatomy, kicked off her boots and flung herself down on the bunk. A moment later she was yanking her clips out of her hair and flinging them across the cabin in an effort to get comfortable on an uncomfortable mattress in a cabin that was too small and oppressively hot; it wasn't likely and shortly not meant to be.

Worf was silent, not for long. He sighed in martyred resignation. "It is obvious you have feelings for him."

Dax's eyes opened; she sat up. Klingons were not Cardassians and could not see in the dark. Klingons didn't have to. Worf could be sightless and he would still know, if not be able to describe the look on her face. The heat emanating from her never mind the ship's thermostatic controls. Worf was immediately explanatory once again, attempting to clarify, "I meant in friendship, as a friend."

Dax didn't care what he meant. She was up and pulling on her boots, seizing her jacket, duffel, and heading for parts unknown, or at least a different cabin. "See you in two weeks," was her farewell commingled with an unspoken warning not to pursue, or to follow, or even attempt to.

The door to the cabin closed leaving Worf to stand there not liking what he saw, what he felt, and even less what he knew. He sat down on the cot, picking up her forgotten T-shirt. A growl sounded deep in his throat as he suddenly ripped the shirt in half, his fist slamming into his com badge. "Location of Doctor Bashir."

_"Please state the nature of the emergency." the computer replied._

"The location of Commander Dax," Worf assured.

Currently in the corridor, soon to be in the turbolift aiming for the farthest regions of the _Defiant Dax could get for some emotional peace and quiet. There was nowhere far enough for Worf not to be able to reach her by communicator. __"Commander Worf to Commander Dax…" Worf's impatient voice sounded over her badge just as she stepped off the lift into the welcoming solitude of an alternative crew deck._

"Oh!" Dax pulled her com badge off to heave it down the corridor, listening to Worf's impatient call for her again as the door to the lift closed and she headed for the _Defiant's shuttlebay and the Ark. _

It was cool in the shuttlebay. Cold in Kira's Captain's quarters aboard the shuttlecraft. Too cold not to wear her field jacket, too hot to keep it on. Kira's duffel rested on the lower cot in anticipation, the upper cot was just that, upper. Dax shoved the duffel off the lower cot to make room for herself, pulled her jacket up over her shoulders and settled into falling asleep; she couldn't fall asleep. Restless, perspiring under the insulated jacket within ten minutes, she had three hours left and counting to her break. She got up to see what she could do about coercing the shuttle's thermostat into working.

Julian was on the bridge of the Ark, his back to her and the midsection as he stood over the forward console. She hadn't noticed him there fifteen minutes ago when she first boarded in an angry rush.

She hadn't noticed because he wasn't there. He was still in the Ark's cargo hold at the time, having no more an idea Dax was aboard kicking his duffel rather than Kira's around the cabin than Dax had any idea he was aboard. They both found out quickly enough however. She, a moment before he. He, a moment later when he turned around in answer to the sound of a door opening, a mug of coffee in his hand.

Bashir broke out into an immediate grin at the sight of her and the glistening, bulging muscles of her biceps and chest wet with sweat, emphasized by her sweeping trail of spots and long, sable brown hair unwound and hanging down in heavy chunks of blunted layers; she looked devastating. "I must say that is by far the sexiest I have ever seen you look." was what immediately came to Bashir's mind and out of his mouth. "I'm serious. By far the sexiest thing I have ever seen you wear."

"The thermostatic controls aren't working," Dax explained her odd mixture of trousers, boots, and underwear, simply not why she was there half dressed in her clothes and half not. Nor why she was perspiring for that matter; it was cold in there, not hot.

"Oh, yes, I know," Bashir agreed as she stepped forward to have a seat at the console. "Rom's working on them -- a break from working on the engines," he disclosed. "Which are still offline. A requested break, actually, requested by me. For while we might need the engines, when it comes to the temperature, we always have our jackets…" He couldn't help keep his gaze from traveling back over her incredible form. "To keep warm. The equipment's a bit more sensitive than that."

"And what are you doing?" Dax asked when he lapsed into a brief silence.

"Me?" he said with a casual look around; too casual. "Nothing really. Certainly not trying my hand at repairing the engines -- the navigation system is another story." He decided to sit down in the second of the two-crew seats. "It's working. Extremely well, as a matter of fact. I tested it out of curiosity -- over where we might be going," his grin flashed. "I took a chance at downloading Kira's flight plan for the _Defiant to see if she even knew yet; she does."_

"Worf's flight plan," Dax corrected, suspecting that was much of the reason behind Worf's melancholy mood, the fact that he felt he was being overlooked. His authority and status being questioned when it wasn't being ignored; it was. It usually was. Not intentionally. It was just the way it was, seemed to be.

"Worf's flight plan," Bashir shrugged. "The flight plan's there and if our Mister Anar saw to truthfully divulging the location of his colony, rather than change his mind two days from now…then I'm right…" he was back to staring at her arms, trying to only stare at her arms.

"Right?" Dax said.

He smiled. "If you'll need something warmer to wear than your T-shirt, you'll definitely need something warmer than an athletic brassiere. The planet's Class M -- reasonably so; charted even, believe it or not. However, the calculated position to the system's suns at the moment suggests much of the western continent is about to enter its winter solstice, and it's the western continent where we're going; there's only a choice of two."

"Worf and I had an argument," Dax admitted, calmer now that she was relaxing, and no longer perspiring.

"Oh," Bashir said, nothing else.

"It comes with the territory," she assured before he did say something too cute and therefore obnoxious.

"Marriage, you mean, arguments," he agreed. "Wouldn't know. Though there's no reason not to believe you or anyone else who's ever been married."

Which there wasn't, even though he was thinking more about what an interesting culture the Klingon culture was producing cuts, scrapes, bruises, and broken bones with hugs and kisses and not so much as a scratch during an argument; apparently it hadn't gotten that far."Something you want to talk about?"

"No." She was more interested in his mug. "Coffee?"

"Just coffee," he nodded. "Nothing as exotic as Klingon raktajino, I'm afraid."

"I'll take it," Dax rose for their commissary/replicator also apparently working.

"Breakfast already?" Bashir followed.

"May as well," she sat down at the small island with a shrug, briskly stirring her coffee and noticing for the first time the dark circles under his eyes. "You look awful."

"Thank you," he joined her at the table. "I maintain you look as lovely as I said."

"You said sexy," Dax assured with a nod forward toward the cabin. "I forgot it."

"It..?" Bashir said.

"My shirt," she said, not that she didn't have another one with her, she did. She just didn't feel like getting up to get it. She wasn't quite sure why she didn't feel like it, she just knew she didn't. Perhaps she was testing him. Perhaps she was spiting Worf. She knew she wasn't testing herself. She was, however, possibly also spiting herself for it was cold; she was cold.

"Ah," Bashir said. "In the heat of the moment -- pardon the pun," he added for she didn't look hot, she looked cold. He rose to offer her his jacket with reference to being prepared with his long-sleeved version of her short-sleeved T-shirt when she protested. "No, it's all right…it'll be our secret."

"That we wear the same size jacket?" she quipped to him draping his over her shoulders.

He doubted if they did. Even if she could get it on it was questionable as to whether or not she could fasten it; at least comfortably. "That you're not all thumbs when it comes to your hair." He helped her pull the random tails of hair out from under the collar. "To think I thought you only kept it up all these years because you didn't know what else to do with it."

He really did have a provocative way of speaking even when he wasn't trying to be intentionally obvious about it. "It grows that way," Dax assured.

Bashir laughed. "The devil it does. No more than mine doesn't grow requiring a trip to the salon every three weeks or so."

"What happened with Lange?" Dax preferred to talk about something else.

The smile on his face changed, less broad, more secretive perhaps, not quite as sincere. He focused on his coffee briefly before taking a drink. "Nothing happened. A small hematoma, that's all."

"Then why aren't you in bed?" Her head waggled in scolding for the dark rings of exhaustion.

"Why aren't you?" he countered. "Since apparently Kira and the Chief have the bridge."

"I was," she admitted.

"I had an idea I might be interrupting something," he agreed. "Not entirely certain what exactly. Simply something athletic came to mind…" He was looking back at her looking at him. "Not anything specifically athletic," he attempted not to laugh into his coffee. "Running, jumping…springball…yes, all right, perhaps that didn't come out exactly right."

"I'm positive it didn't," Dax nodded.

"Well, what would you have said?" he protested. "Or thought for that matter if you turned around to find me -- perhaps not half naked, but certainly partially clothed, drenched in sweat?"

"Lost?" Dax mused.

"Sleepwalking," Bashir agreed. "Either's a fair enough excuse. Have to try and remember them."

"Lange," she encouraged his more serious side. "Julian, I know you. You were fine when you transported to the _Tir. You were not fine when you returned."_

Seemed fine when he left is what she actually meant; Bashir did not correct her.

"You've not even come near the bridge," she added in supporting evidence how something was wrong.

He had also managed thus far not to pull her into his arms and kiss her, so what did either of them really mean? Bashir continued paying more attention to his coffee.

"Julian…" her cold hand touched his wrist.

He smiled. "I gave Sorge the equipment. Nothing anyone will really miss. Interesting though the way every conceivable alarm is set to sound, identifying whatever we might be attempting to transport aboard, rather than what we should be and aren't -- my field bag," he clarified for her. "It was empty. About as empty as empty can get."

"No, I understood what you meant," Dax straightened up.

"Oh," he said, "Well, yes, I suppose the real question is -- are you going to turn me in? Rough guess says you'll miss me when they come to take me away."

"No, of course I'm not going to turn you in…Julian," she said somewhat exasperated, "don't be absurd. What you did was hardly -- "

"What I did was definitely a crime," he stood up for a refill of his coffee. "Interesting the only Federation technology we don't mind sharing with anyone is a blast from one of our phaser rifles or banks. Quite all right. I'm also sure we're allowed a percentage of loss for our expedition; we'll just blame it on the Maquis."

"Now that's wrong," Dax was shaking her head as he sat back down.

Bashir shrugged. So it was wrong. He wasn't perfect and she was close to making him nuts sitting there with his jacket dangling off her shoulders. He decided to help her on with it. Curious, he admitted to know if it would fit; it fit. Even a little loose with more than enough give to fasten it; she didn't fasten it. He fell deeper in love with her at that moment, feeling his hand graze the back of her neck as he tugged her hair out from the collar once again. "Is that Worf's problem?" he asked. "Not the loss of one of my neuro med kits, leaving you, Kira, I daresay even I, to fend for ourselves on a colony of known Maquis? We know it's not the potential threat of Klingons, or he'd never admit it to be. Also interesting to note the one who's usually blameless is the one who endeavors to absorb the blame."

"I'm not absorbing anything," Dax pushed his hand away.

"I said usually," Bashir teased.

She knew what he said and perhaps it was Worf's problem as he called it, or perhaps it wasn't. It wasn't. It should be, but it wasn't. "I came here to get some sleep," she stood up to pull his jacket off and fling it at him. "Somewhere quiet. I had no idea you were even here."

"That makes two of us," Bashir agreed as she strode for Kira's assigned cabin; he should say his cabin. The one he had decided to appropriate from Kira under the guise of generosity and leaving the larger of the two closets for the two female crew members while he made do with the smaller.

"What?" Dax groaned to him strolling up behind her. "Julian, I really don't want to talk about it."

"No, that's fine," he accepted. "I just want my duffels."

"Your duffels?" she stared at the duffel she had upended and slammed into the corner. "I thought it was Kira's duffel."

Explained why one of them was upended and stuffed in a corner to where the second one she had apparently been satisfied to just kick off the end of the cot. "No, they're mine," he collected them both.

"I moved them to make room." It wasn't too difficult to know what he was thinking.

"I realize that," Bashir agreed.

"And I realize -- " Dax started to snap. She paused to look at Kira stationed in the cabin doorway, an attempted look of tolerance on her face.

"I thought we settled this," Kira said.

"Well, yes, actually, however…" Bashir went on to explain in great detail his thoughts of generosity. The actual size of this cabin compared to the actual size of the second. The fact that he was one, and unimportantly male, and they were two and equally unimportantly both female regardless of the fact one of them was, internally anyway, an integrated humanoid-gastropod; he was in love with a worm. Wholly and completely in love with a worm approximately eight inches in height, ten inches in circumference, of advanced years with two little sparkling eyes, vascularized within the abdomen of a Trill host named Jadzia, above her pelvis and below her pleural cavity; she only looked like a woman. An inch above his height, five times his strength, married to a Klingon and drop-dead gorgeous all at the same time.

Bashir shrank back against the cabin wall with his head hung. Not so much in horrified realization as it was to get out of the way of his duffels flying past and out into the corridor followed quickly by Dax's. He was in love. However much his senses might be horrified they were also reeling. Love wasn't logical, it defied logic as a matter of fact; love was chemistry.Getting struck in the head with fifty pounds of luggage was a different story, particularly when it was doubtful it would be of any help at all in knocking some sense into him.

"There," Kira announced with a dusting off of her hands, having settled once again whatever was the difficulty over the quarter arrangements, i.e., who was going to sleep where three days from now.

"I'd say it was settled," Dax agreed with a nod to Bashir.

"Quite," he said. "Nothing really too breakable either; yours?"

"No, not really," Dax picked up her duffel to fire it across the short expanse of hall into its new home.

"Oh, yes, thank you," Bashir said when she offered to do the same with his. "Anywhere is fine."

They both landed rather neatly on the upper bunk. Dax patted his shoulder. "That way the light won't shine in your eyes."

"Down into them you mean," Bashir agreed. "In the meantime all I have to do is roll over and stare down into it."

"There's a way around that," Dax promised.

"Don't roll over."

"Exactly," Dax said while Kira bellowed for Rom and a check on the status of the engines.

"Um…" Rom's four-lobed Ferengi head appeared through the interior hatch of the cargo hold. "Working on them, yup. Thermostat controls, too."

"Thermostat?" Kira sneered.

"The equipment?" Bashir reminded to where a Trill's hands were always cold, their shoulders weren't meant to be, as did the sensitivity of their equipment figure into the equation. "I suppose, yes, it we were housed in a cave we could always drain our phasers on a variety of rocks to keep ourselves and the equipment reasonably warm. In the meantime we're not in a cave, we're aboard a shuttle where it's supposed to be warm; comfortable at least."

"I really don't know where he comes up with these things," Dax admitted to Kira.

Neither did Kira. Somewhat apprehensive about inquiring into it further. Dax's attire or lack thereof was different. "Explains the brassiere."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, I can explain the brassiere, or rather Dax can."

"Worf and I had an argument," Dax nodded.

"Um, yup," Rom could understand that. "Leeta's done that. Just, you know, walked out. Not thinking about anything. Just, you know, walking out."

"Sounds about right," Dax said.

"Does it?" Bashir inquired of Kira. She looked at him; he grinned. "Quite. I'm with you. Far more inclined to tell them, whoever, to get out. Be damned if I'm going to be ordered from my own quarters, or for that matter, voluntarily leave."

"What if they're not your quarters?" Dax cleverly put in.

"That's not the point," Bashir countered. "The point is they are your quarters, or were your quarters; I'm assuming you were in your quarters, as much as they are Worf's."

"No, that's not the point," Kira assured.

"Oh?" Bashir said. "What's the point?"

She ignored him to eye what appeared to be two mugs of coffee sitting on the island in their commissary."Replicator working?"

"Yup," Rom said. "Waste disposal…transporter…"

"Transporter?" Kira interrupted in threat.

"Yup," Rom swore. "Just tested it. Couple of times. Test article into the shuttlebay, back to the cargo hold; not a problem."

"We'll take care of that," Kira headed forward to bang open the appropriate panel and pluck out of a few necessary isolinear chips that were therefore unnecessary to their goal of being transporter-less. 

"Um…" Rom said. "Yup, okay. I'll get back to the engines -- you want those online, right?"

"Of course, I want them online," Kira said.

"Just checking," he disappeared. 

Kira returned to eyeing Dax who smiled. "What's the point?"

"I need you alert," Kira reminded. "You," she assured Bashir, "I'll settle for alive."

"Do I really look that bad?" Bashir wondered as Kira veered aft to find out for herself a working replicator did not mean raktajino.

"Worse," Dax said.

"Oh. Well, probably has something to do with twenty-four hours and no sleep."

"Probably…But little," she proposed wisely, "to do with neuro med kits."

"What do you mean?" he maintained. "My mood -- if you're talking about my mood, or what you think is my mood, has everything to do with my med kit.I committed a crime, for God's sake. In the name of humanity, but yes, I still committed one. Bit thought provoking if it isn't anything else."

"Little…" Dax borrowed back his jacket to slip it on since he wasn't doing too much with it other than standing there holding it, "to do with neuro med kits."

   [1]: mailto:gad@yahoo.com



	2. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER SIX

Dax joined Kira and her coffee, making herself comfortable on the floor of the commissary area, leaving Bashir the available stool despite his liberal protests, self-admitted to be chauvinistic in nature and content; Dax had no idea what he meant. The stool was uncomfortable and hard. A kidney shaped seat of rigid, unyielding foam durable enough to be used as a structural alloy. Her legs were too long to rest comfortably on the supporting foot rest, not quite long enough to reach the floor. Kira didn't even bother with the foot rest other than as a point of reference, the toes of her boots curled around the stool's front legs, her elbows propped on the island as she drank her coffee. Julian, Dax knew, would make do with the stool.

The floor was of a structural alloy not interested in pretending to be a stool. There was also room for Dax to stretch out her legs and rest against the wall. Her conversation with Kira and Bashir stretched on for fifteen minutes, the three of them tossing out initial ideas on what should be the order of things once arriving on Dyaan IX before her eyes and attention started to droop. She remembered Kira saying something about two hours. The next voice she heard was Julian's bending over her.

Kira's mentioning two hours was a reminder to Dax of her scheduled time to return to duty aboard the bridge, where Worf had apparently already returned, aborting his recess, leaving Kira free to spend her four hour break roaming the _Defiant's silent corridors. They were all poised for something to happen. Either en route or once there. Anticipatory if they weren't nervous, difficult for any of them to relax._

"I was going to continue with some preliminary analyses for a short while; insure the data systems are working," Bashir answered Kira's notification the chronometer was ticking.

"Fine," Kira said, leaving Bashir in the interesting predicament of rousing Dax to send her home to Worf only presumed to be aboard the bridge, or leaving her to fall asleep on the floor. He sat there thinking about it at the island for a short while, his conscience eventually getting the better of him. 

"Come on," Bashir crouched beside Dax slumped awkwardly against the wall.

"No," she refused, more asleep than awake.

"What do you mean no? You're half asleep. You're certainly not going to sit here sulking over some ridiculous argument with Worf. That's not only absurd, it's childish; on both your parts. Surely Captain Sisko is confident the risks are minimal, even if he doesn't believe the miraculous claims, or we wouldn't be here."

"Worf's annoyed that we are here," she mumbled.

Bashir was silent for a moment. "That's also absurd, isn't it? You're a science officer; our science officer. The expedition's not only your duty, it's the whole point of your career."

He made an interesting point. Dax frowned. "You think that's it?"

"Do I think what's it? That Worf sounds rather like the Chief complaining about Keiko putting her career ahead of doting on him? Apparently so."

Dax shook her head. "That Worf's annoyed about the expedition."

Bashir believed that was what he just said. She really was half asleep, innocent looking with her hair hanging, almost fragile. He smiled, feeling stronger than he had felt around her in quite a while, simply not quite strong enough to pick her up. His head bent close to hers again. "I'd carry you except for apart from how we can apparently borrow each other's jacket in a pinch, we probably stand less of a chance of getting hurt if you were to carry me."

He said something about getting hurt, odd because Dax was thinking the same thing. "Worf's annoyed about you."

Bashir would remember those words for the rest of his life, like a threat hanging over her. "I beg your pardon?" he said, an edge to his tone.

Dax sat up straight, her groggy eyes opening to look at him.

"Me?" Bashir said, wanting an answer, an explanation, demanding one almost.

Dax nodded. "You're right, he sounds like the Chief." She got to her feet.

Bashir helped her. "He sounds like the Chief until the part where he starts handing out black eyes to go along with his insecurities. I repeat, I beg your pardon? I'll give him a reason to threaten anyone."

Dax was awake and Bashir had more than an edge to his tone. "What?" she said.

"Least of all you," he assured. "Excuse me but we've been friends for years and quite frankly if Worf doesn't like it, it really is too bad."

Dax thought about that. "You're right," she decided with a pat of his chest, turned away to turn back after a step and return his jacket before she left the shuttle.

For God knew what if Worf really was that upset for whatever reason. Suspicious, with or without just cause; there was no cause. "Jadzia!" Bashir sprang to life to catch her as she exited through the hatch.

Dax stopped. Whatever he was thinking; she wasn't quite sure what he was thinking; not quite sure if she wanted to know. But whatever he was thinking, she was thinking with less than two hours and counting it really was absurd to return to the crew quarters aboard the _Defiant when there was an available cabin not ten feet away._

"You're right," she said again and turned on her heel for the cabin, the door closing behind her. Any feared and imaginary disaster coming by way of Worf momentarily averted, Bashir stared at the cabin door, from the cabin back to the hatch.

"Everything's a-okay," Rom supported at his elbow.

"What?" Bashir said.

"The, um, life support?" Rom pointed to the jacket in his hand.

"Yes, of course, you mean the temperature," Bashir said.

"Yup, the equipment," Rom agreed.

"The devil with the equipment," Bashir headed for what should be the weapons locker and was empty, "everything's fine until he gets it into his head that collaborating on a medical study somehow constitutes a willful desire to spend the night together -- where are the damn phaser rifles? What are we supposed to use in defense? Hyposprays? Carrying one's Hippocratic oath just a bit too far, isn't it?Excuse me, but I don't care whose family cuff they don't wear, they are Maquis."

"The _Defiant?" Rom hazarded a guess._

"Yes, of course, the _Defiant," Bashir leaned back against the wall with a nervous run of his fingers through his hair. "As in the __Defiant's weapons locker. No sense being premature, you're right. We are three days from the outer colonies…in the meantime mere hours from the Cardassian border. They'll be upon us before we know it."_

"Um…" Rom said.

"Aboard," Bashir clarified. "They'll be aboard before we know it; I'm overtired."

"You look it," Rom nodded.

"Probably something to do with a week without adequate sleep, never mind the past day or two," Bashir stared down on Dax asleep moments after she stretched out on the bunk. "Excluding your husband, for I'm not quite sure how much of an effect sleep deprivation has on the general mood of a Klingon, if it has any measurable effect, or if anyone can even tell. I do know however there's a direct correlation to the physical, mental, and emotional performance of the remaining majority of us, even the Borg."

He sat down on the floor to activate his com badge and extend Kira's idea of a recess an additional two hours under doctor's orders, ones that could not be overruled unless they went to Red Alert, they didn't.

Dax didn't realize Bashir was there and in the dark almost stepped on him when she woke up close to four hours later to find him stretched out on the floor, her duffel stuffed under his head like a pillow. She caught her unsteady balance to sit down and eye him briefly before she slipped off the bunk and onto to her knees to push him out of the way so she could find her boots and jacket; she found them and he barely stirred. The lights came up low, the computer announcing the time to be 1507 just as her hand touched his chin to turn his head her direction, expressing her curiosity with the reasonable inquiry, "What are you doing?"

Bashir's eyes opened with his grin. "Morning already?"

"1507," Dax nodded.

"Oh," he said. "Well, that's what happens when you don't go to bed until tomorrow, it all starts to catch up."

She was still waiting for an answer. He had one, sitting up to stretch. "Actually, I remember I came in to find my duffel, apparently this is as far as I got."

"It's my duffel," Dax revealed.

"Is it?" he looked. "So it is. Quite all right. Worked out just as well. Coffee? Tea?" He left out the _or me portion of the ancient adage in his invitation for breakfast._

"You have a beard," she apparently considered that to be significant as she collected her belongings in preparation of making her getaway.

"Do I?" Bashir's hand went to his face, pausing to check his dulled reflection in the shuttle's transparent forward bow when they exited into the cargo hold. "Soon," he agreed when what felt reasonably smooth showed early signs of a developing splotchyshadow. "Admittedly haven't had too much time to pay attention to the cosmetic the last few days…" he heard the door to the cargo hold open and close and hurried after Dax before she escaped in the turbolift. "Fair enough. We'll forego breakfast until after and race each other to the shower."

"We're late enough," she nodded.

"To the contrary," Bashir disputed, "I'm not late at all -- neither are you. I allowed for thirty minutes wake-up time when I adjusted duty call to a more reasonable six hour recess. Somewhat absurd to expect you to pull on your boots and shirt…" his attention trailed over her jacket and the conspicuously absent mock-turtle neck that should be there and wasn't. "And be on the bridge in five minutes…where's your shirt? You didn't bring another one, did you? Quite all right, you can borrow mine."

"They're in my duffel," Dax promised. "I didn't want to wake you."

"Along with your hair clips," he smiled at her unkempt locks. "Also all right. We're both awake now. So what will it be? Breakfast or the shower? I think you know what my recommendation is if you really want to give Worf cause for his consternation."

She looked at him, his smile widened to a grin. "Breakfast. There's no reason for either of us to commit suicide just to prove a point. Particularly when technically anyway we did just spend the night together and shall continue to for the next two weeks."

"Maybe some tea," Dax entered the turbolift with instructions for it to take a detour by way of the _Defiant's commissary._

Kira was in the commissary, drinking the last of her first cup of raktajino. "You're late," she greeted Dax. Bashir she gave a nod.

"It does seem like we just did this, doesn't it?" Dax countered, setting her duffel down on an adjacent chair with a friendly smile.

Kira shrugged, it mattering most to her that she wasn't too late to welcome the Shakaars aboard. "We're still two hours from the border; I never even heard the computer."

"Imagine that," Dax's smile floated its way over Bashir as she crossed for the replicator. "Coffee?"

"Must have been a widespread failure," he agreed, moving her duffel to the floor so he could have a seat. "Yes, coffee, please."

"I'll say," Dax handed him a mug. "It even affected the system aboard the Ark."

"So it did," Bashir admitted to Kira as Dax sat down next to him and across from Kira, not that she didn't have a choice, she did, and that was her choice. "What Jadzia's attempting to insinuate is I'm the culprit behind everyone oversleeping -- you didn't oversleep. I intentionally extended your break by two hours. Something to do with everyone's general and good health -- what?" he said to Dax for some bizarre reason suddenly picking now to quite literally fling herself at him, or over him, she was attempting to do one of the two.

"My duffel," she said.

"It's right there," he agreed.

"I know. May I have it, please?"

"Oh," Bashir grinned. "I knew you wanted something. Simply a matter of what… hair clips and T-shirt I suspect?" he took it upon himself to dig them out of her duffel for her. Not too difficult to do. There wasn't too much in there other than a spare jumpsuit, one or two additional shirts and few other articles of clothing she probably would prefer he not wave around the public atmosphere of the commissary even though no one else was there except for Kira and him.

"Thank you," Dax accepted her shirt and her clips, pulling her jacket off to pull on her T-shirt.

Bashir grinned again for Kira. "And, of course, the reason for Jadzia's initial impression she was pressed for time -- my adjusting duty call?" he prompted her. "If not the reason behind why Jadzia's dressing in the middle of the commissary?"

"Next time I'll just wake you up," Dax threatened.

"Next time please do." He took her clips away from her, wanting to touch her almost desperately.More desperately than he could ever recall wanting to touch her before in their association, if only touch her hair. "No, it's all right, drink your coffee. I can do it. I am a surgeon.I think I can manage to braid someone's hair. Hardly anything esoteric; simple matter of manual dexterity…"

"How do you stand him?" Kira succumbed at that point to rolling her eyes.

"He's better than the average holo program," Dax disclosed.

"Much better," Bashir cracked with a critical eye over his artistic endeavor that looked slightly lopsided until he cocked his head and then it looked straight. "Not that I mean to suggest either of you two lovely and charming ladies ever have to make do with Quark's idea of entertainment; there." He clipped one of her clips in place on the tail end of the braid to hold it all in place. The others he stuffed in her jacket pocket for safekeeping.

"Dare I ask?" Dax asked, not about the latest imported addition to Quark's extensive and ever-expanding library of adult entertainment until their ever vigilant Chief Constable Odo got wind of it and then it was into the solid waste disposal along with the rest of the trash; Federation rules. 

"What?" Bashir said. "It's not perfect. But I've been accused far more often than I care to count of being perfect and therefore obnoxious."

"Or just obnoxious," Kira agreed. "What's with the beard?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it a beard, barely a shadow. Why? Actually I was thinking of keeping it."

"Think again." Kira picked up her coffee with the suggestion to Dax, "Let's go."

Dax obligingly rose with a reach for her duffel, Julian right there to beat her to it with a wry comment about Benjamin's devilish looking beard. "Do you think she said the same thing to Captain Sisko when he decided to give his a go?"

"I would doubt it."

"So would I," he grinned. "It's all right. I have it."

"Julian…" she tried not to have it come out as a sigh but enough was enough, and it was very close to being enough.

"What?" he said innocently.

Which he either was or he wasn't. He wasn't, not to that extent, and she hadn't helped matters with her own near shameless flirtation. It was shameless. She remained uncertain exactly as to why. Perhaps she was continuing to test him while unwilling to admit while Worf may not have cause to be concerned, but he did have cause to be annoyed.

"Nothing," she shook her head, taking her duffel away from him to drop it on the chair from where she would collect it later, either on her way to her and Worf's quarters, or on her way to somewhere else. Something to do with her being entitled to being annoyed over Worf's being annoyed with her choice to ignore Julian rather than correct and chastise him every ten minutes.

"Oh, look what the cat decided to drag in," the Chief applauded the bedraggled trio with their respective mugs of coffee, beards and askew hairdos. He shook his head. Two hours late they couldn't have taken another ten minutes?

Worf, in the meantime, was startled in the moment before his face set, focused on Dax's hair. That did not escape Bashir's attention and he was glad, he was so glad. "Or has yet to drag out," he countered on his saunter for O'Brien and the Ops console. "You look as bad as I feel."

"Or vice versa," O'Brien assured. "What's the matter? Forget to wash your face?"

"Actually I've been told I look distinguished."

"By whom? The one trying to pry her eyes open or the one with them still shut?"

"I'll never tell," Bashir smiled over his coffee, down on the intricate display. "Which button do I push first?"

"Right there," O'Brien assured.

"The transporter? Why?"

"Eh, heh," O'Brien snickered. "Three guesses, and don't call us, we'll call you."

"Clever…" Bashir wandered his way over toward Dax busy reestablishing control over navigation from the Chief at Ops. He cocked his head again to view her braid giving it a tug in an effort to set it straight. Worf bristled, stiff in his maintained station at the helm. Dax slapped lightly at Bashir's hand. "It's slightly crooked," he confessed.

"Only slightly?" she replied, having an idea Kira was the Chief's one trying to pry her eyes opened and she was the one with them still closed, apparent by the unkempt state of her hair.

Bashir smiled, perching on the edge of her console to finish his coffee and find her com badge resting somewhere between her left hand and his left hip. He picked the badge up, fingering it with a glance over the unspoiled left breast of her jacket before he extended it to her. "Yours?"

"Yes," Dax took her badge, fastening it in place. It wasn't where she left it, but she didn't tell him that. Worf apparently had gone looking for her after tiring of her refusal to answer him and found the badge where she had flung it, down the corridor of one of the decks. Why Worf didn't then just order the computer to conduct a dermal scan to locate her instead of returning with her badge to the bridge, she didn't know; he probably did.The computer revealing she was aboard the Ark where Rom was, and for a short while, Kira, after Worf had returned to the bridge to relieve Kira of her duty at the helm. Julian maintained himself on lockout if Worf attempted to find him, something Worf couldn't overrule unless he was willing to issue a false alarm; a class offense.

Dax thought back to Risa almost two years ago and Worf's willingness to sabotage the resort's weather grid. Steadfastly determined to abort their vacation and return home if he had to destroy the planet to do so; all because he was jealous, nothing to do with Julian at all.

All Klingons were jealous. Domineering, possessive, controlling. Worf was Klingon and no exception. Struggling to keep his expression deadpan and her from hearing his low, muttering, teeth-gnashing growls. She was wrong in thinking Worf really was annoyed about Julian, or even had a reason to be annoyed about Julian. Julian was right in his immediate and initial presumption Worf was the Chief sputtering about what he deemed to be Keiko's obsession with her career in botany. Worf was the Chief, simply using Julian as a convenient excuse. Dax could feel her annoyance return just at the point she was willing to forgive and forget.

She'd be damned if she forgave or forgot. She yanked the clip and Julian's cock-eyed version of a braid out of her hair, combing it as best as she could with her fingers and working to twist it back into reasonable shape. Bashir was running with O'Brien's joke about the transporter, running on about them needing to use the transporter eventually anyway to transport Anar and Sian. Worf was quickly forgetting about her to huff and puff and spar with Kira about where to intern the Shakaar outcasts.

The Chief was lying stretched out and face down on the Ops console moaning about his bloodshot eyes bleeding if he had to look at the display, any display, for ten minutes more never mind two hours. Reminding them all he had just beaten an undeserved attempted murder rap by the skin of his teeth less than thirty hours ago and if anyone needed and hadn't had any sleep over the past few days it was him, never mind any of them.

"Where are my clips?" Dax interrupted.

"What?" Bashir said. "Oh. I put them in your pocket, didn't I? They're in your pocket…wait a minute," he patted his breast pocket just to be sure. "Yes, they're in your pocket…" he paused just as he was about to reach and show her.

"So you did," Dax finished for him, producing them with a smile to work them into the twists of her hair; she did that deliberately.

Bashir stared at her. To where he intimated they may have crossed each other's path during the past six hours, she came right out and said as much in so many words. The disclosure wasn't received well. It was received silently, but not well. Not by Worf, and also not by him. Damn Worf being annoyed, or not being annoyed with him for whatever reason. He cared little what Worf thought, said, or felt about him. It was an entirely separate matter when it came to Worf's opinion, belief, and certainly his treatment of her. There the rules of the game became strikingly different. She was always innocent, occasionally witty. He, Julian, was always at fault. Her decision to offer Worf a revelation to the contrary wasn't wise. She knew it wasn't wise and if she didn't, Bashir did. To stress a point impossible of being belabored, Klingons were known to kill their mates during acts of love. It went without saying what they were capable of when it came to fits of rage.

Bashir aborted his pause to straighten up, silently resuming drinking his coffee, maintaining his position perched on the console at her side.

"What about the Ark?" Dax offered into the conversation, personally agreeing with Kira that Anar and his son weren't prisoners and therefore it wasn't technically appropriate to render them to the brig.

"The Ark?" Kira hadn't thought of that. Now that she did…

"They are Maquis," Worf insisted.

"Technically," Dax smiled. "As technically," she shrugged to Kira, "there are no Maquis. What about Rom? Couldn't we leave him in supervision? The transporter is disabled. The Ark is confined in the shuttlebay…"

"What about our equipment?" Bashir suddenly said.

"What about it?" Dax looked at him.

"Just that. It's aboard the Ark -- the cargo hold of the Ark," he hopped down off the console to stride toward the Chief. He wasn't quite sure why he did that, simply needing to get away from her for a moment or two. "What's to stop them from destroying the equipment?"

"Why would they destroy the equipment?" Kira sneered.

"Especially when it's by their invitation we're even here," Dax reminded.

"For a needed ride home," Bashir emphasized. "No, it's not by their invitation, it's by Captain Sisko's orders."

"They didn't need a ride here," Dax said to Kira. "And I'm not sure exactly how much weight Benjamin's orders do carry -- "

"They don't," Kira assured. Not with Shakaar Adon, the elder, and not with his son Sian. "All right, it's the Ark, it's the Ark."

"All right, it's the Ark," Bashir answered for the silent minority, Worf. "Bit ridiculous everything has to be a project, anyway. I guess if he touches my equipment …I'll just touch his," he nodded firmly to the Chief. "Yes? No?"

"Eh, heh," O'Brien chuckled. "Maybe you should try rephrasing that."

On the contrary, Bashir wasn't rephrasing anything. To the contrary, he was striding for the helm. To assume station at the helm, should Worf take it upon himself to relinquish his possessive hold on the seat. Bashir encouraged him to do so. "Come on. Let's go. We need you alert, and all of that…'Better dead than Red' is one of our antiquated mottoes, not yours…something, something…" He couldn't remember the beginning of another classic, only the part about that being the day when they'd pry the phaser rifle out of his cold dead hand.

It didn't matter. Worf was already moving to turn his back on him in disgust. "I have no idea what you are talking about…"

"It's intentional, I assure you." 

Worf looked at him. He knew when he looked at him he was looking at a rival, his rival for Jadzia, not only her attention, and Bashir knew he knew. Still caring little what Worf knew, believed he also might know, and that was Jadzia's undying, unwavering devotion, loyalty, and love. How confident he was Jadzia would never dream of stepping out on him. How smug. 

Worf was not as confident as he might prefer to be. A glance over Bashir in the direction of Dax, he rose from his seat to his full height, towering over the puny Human frame of the slender doctor, dwarfing Bashir with his massive Klingon chest and powerful arms. A flicker of apprehension crossed Dax's eyes that Bashir could not see with his back to her.

A flicker of apprehension immediately replaced by a clear and penetrating silent warning to Worf that he better not dare put his hands on him. Good reasons, bad, or indifferent.

"Are you sure…" Kira was asking if Bashir really thought he could manage the helm.

"He can manage," O'Brien was answering with a departing wave. "He can manage …if he can't, here's hoping you find out before he rams them in their rear impulse engines," he paused in his, "Yo, let's go," to Worf to chuckle.

"Actually, they just cut their engines to impulse power," Dax smiled with a reach across for the helm in response to the _Tir suddenly streaking into view 15,000 meters off the forward bow by the time the __Defiant slowed to a comparable pace._

"There, you see?" O'Brien snorted to Worf. "What did I tell you? They're stretching it out as far and as long as they can stretch it; two hours? Give me a break. _Eighteen hours we'll still be creeping the last dozen meters to the border. We'd be gone and back twice by that time -- and maybe you are, but I'm not sticking around to find out if I'm right; __eighteen hours? Eighteen __more hours? I won't be blind by that time, I'll be dead."_

"All right, go ahead," Kira waved permission to Bashir as Worf reluctantly relinquished the helm to follow the Chief's advice: "Come on. Give it to him. Just give it up to him; trust me, we'll know if he runs us up their rear -- " The door to the turbolift closed.

"Impulse engines," Dax smiled to Bashir sitting down. "I'm sure you can manage."

"Yes," so was Bashir. He logged on, Dax locking him into her console at Kira's added, precautionary direction.

"Co-pilot," Dax explained pleasantly when several of Bashir's panels suddenly went dark and several panels at her station suddenly lit up.

"Yes," Bashir said, his voice and tone even, quiet, focused on the console and viewer. "I'll want to talk to you…I'm quite serious. I'll want to talk to you. Not here, now; later."

Dax shrugged after several seconds spent being thoughtful about what he might want to talk about. "He was asking for it -- "

"That's not the damn point!" Bashir interrupted, his fist striking the console, suddenly, angrily, loud.

Kira's head snapped up. Her expression contorted, incredulous, wondering what was wrong with him now; he didn't care about Kira. It was Dax's attention he wanted, and Dax's attention he had. Momentarily startled and now looking at him, her dark brown eyes focused, concentrating, searching his.

Bashir relented, his fingers running nervously across the crown of his hair. His voice dropping once again quiet, soft and low, his words for her ears only. "It's not a question of what he may have been asking for -- what he very well may deserve -- "

Dax smiled suddenly, turning to Kira. "Julian can't help but be concerned about the equipment."

Bashir paused. Dax mentally crossing her fingers he would follow her lead and drop the subject altogether. For now, definitely. Probably later as well. It was her choice if she would meet with him to discuss anything later; she was doubtful if she would.

"No, Julian can't help but be concerned about the equipment," Bashir seconded tightly. "Granted the transporter aboard the Ark has been disabled, as we can secure the cargo hold as best we can. But what about the shuttlebay? And the transporter there as well -- "

"Already disabled," Kira assured, busy at the Ops console taking care of all the dangling loose ends in preparation.

"What?" Bashir stared at her.

"Julian…" Dax began.

"She can't disable the whole system," Bashir insisted.

"It's inoperable?" Dax nodded in encouraging reminder. With shields engaged and the _Defiant's Romulan cloak as well? Simply put, the transporter simply did not work. An ongoing aggravation the Federation engineers continued to work on trying to resolve._

"I know the transporter is inoperable," Bashir assured coldly. "Inoperable is a far cry from disabling the system. I'm talking about what happens in the instance of an emergency -- who the devil is going to have the time to start reassembling the damn ship in the event of an emergency?"

"Well…in the event of an emergency…" Dax said to Kira.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Romulan," Anar announced to Sian upon their transporting to the _Defiant's bridge six hours later with a shortened disinterested glance around and a conceited smile for Kira as the lights of the __Tir vanished across the boarder into Cardassian space. _

"Old news," the Trill Dax rose from her seat at navigation to her impressive stance, her friendly return designed to put his ego down; impossible to do.

"Not to me," Anar maintained he knew nothing of the Federation-Romulan effort that produced the unique offspring called _Defiant. Insisting it was his extensive background and abilities that allowed him in moments to see through the classic and misleading clean Federation design to identify and know the __Defiant's alien soul._

  


"Whatever," O'Brien sneered as his regal highness exited with his paling-by-comparison stick of a son with Kira, Dax, and Bashir tagging along for good measure. "That's Shakaar Adon like I'm Shakaar Adon."

"You are correct," Worf agreed from his station back at the helm working at removing the last traces of Bashir's fingerprints.

"Oh, yeah, I'm correct," O'Brien assured. "I'm correct."

"Cargo shuttle type 8…No, type 7C. You made a modification with the addition of the warp engines." Anar continued in his endeavor to glean Kira's admiration when they entered the shuttlebay and he was introduced to the Ark.

"What?" Bashir whispered in response to Dax's muttered observation.

"Oh, yes," she nodded. "Oh, yes." There was a glint in the elder's eye, a distinct strut to his walk.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, there's a glint in Kira's eye, and distinct strut to her walk."

Dax looked at him; he nodded. "Standard, you're right."

Yes, she was. She was also right about the elder Shakaar Adon, who, now that she thought about it, really wasn't that old.

"Um, yup," the Ferengi Rom was a true innocent, pulling the sleeve of his jumpsuit down over the heel of his hand and polishing away at the well-worn registry numbers of the shuttle. "That's what she is; 7C. U.S.S…um…" he looked to Dax for a little help.

_"Cincinnatus," she offered._

"Yup, that's it," Rom agreed. "We just call her the Ark because it's a lot easier for some of us to say."

"Reliable as well," Bashir stepped in with a smile.

"Oh, yes," Rom gave her a hefty sock in the port side like some high-powered, hard-sell salesman, Dax crossing her fingers nothing fell off. Bashir crossing his fingers everything did and that way they'd have to scrap the whole idea, or at least return to the station for a more reasonable mode of transportation. 

"She's solid," Rom swore. "She's real solid. Replicator. You know…um…life support…"

"Solid waste disposal," Bashir smiled.

"Um…" Rom said. "Well, no, that's not working again. But I think I have it figured out what's wrong."

"Age," Anar suspected.

"Yup, that's part of it. That's definitely part of it."  
"What about the engines?" Anar inquired of Kira for some bizarre reason.

"They're getting there," she turned away to board the shuttle.

"Getting there…" Anar notified his son.

"It's a joke," Sian agreed, not laughing.

Neither was Anar. It was a joke perhaps, yes, but he was still intrigued.

"Transporter was working really good," Rom hastened to say trotting alongside Anar walking after Kira. "But Major

Kira didn't want it that way. Nope, she didn't. And, _bam. She just reached in, took out the isolinear chips and __whosh straight out the door. Kind of like Leeta does with the plates when she gets mad."_

"Leeta…" Anar paused. The name was Bajoran. One he associated with the Dabo hostess from the Ferengi bar.

"His wife," Kira halted in the hatchway.

"Wife?" Anar repeated, understandably in his opinion. The child was Bajoran, beautiful, no less. The troll talking to him was Ferengi. A scrawny, small man with a gigantic four-lobed head, illiterate-sounding in his speech pattern, beguiling in his gentility and innocence. Accepted apparently by Sisko and his hierarchy as someone of value or Anar highly doubted if Rom would be there, and yet these same people questioned Janice's association with Anon. What was he seeing that they were not?

By the Prophets, what was he seeing that they refused to? He turned around to look back over the Trill, beautiful herself and reportedly married to the Klingon.

"Yes, she's his wife, she's his wife," Kira was dismissing impatiently.

"Yup, she's my wife," Rom nodded. "And you're…um…" he was looking up at Anar from under his bulbous brow. "Wow. You look just like Shakaar Adon, you know that?"

"Perhaps because I am Shakaar Adon," Anar smiled. "You may call me Anar."

"Janice's father," Rom agreed. "The Bajoran one?"

"Does she have another?" Anar asked intrigued.

"Nope," Rom shook his head. "Not that Leeta and I know. She told us about you, Leeta, I mean. She told Leeta. And that's good because Janice is really nice, too. We like her a lot, yes, we do."

"What's wrong with the engines?" Anar finally turned from him to ask Kira.

"They're offline," she finally replied.

"Why don't we see what we can do about that?" he stepped up the hatchway with his smile.

"And the solid waste disposal," Rom nodded. "Yup. Gotta work on that, too."

"And the solid waste disposal," Anar said to Kira.

"Yes, all right," she gave a sharp flick of her head for him to proceed.

"Thank you," he gave a polite gesture for her to proceed as well.

"Well…" Dax said to Bashir as Kira, Anar, Rom and Sian followed each other through the hatch once they decided on the order. "So much for…what exactly are we hoping to do?" she verified.

"Knock him down a peg or two," Bashir agreed. "It was worth a try."

"So it was. Hopeless though, I suspect."

"Yes," so did Bashir.

They were silent after that for several seconds, dallying in the shuttlebay. Neither of them really sure what they were supposed to be doing, or Dax wasn't. Bashir was a free agent. His time his own.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Dax decided there was no harm in asking although she believed she knew what he was going to say. Something about her deliberately instigating Worf. That was interesting to her because he seemed to have little conscience about deliberately instigating Worf.

"Julian?" she said when he looked away from her. Her head cocking in a teasing, cajoling way, a smile eventually finding its way across his face.

"Nothing really," he said. "Just…"

"Worf was asking for it." She recalled that as being her position.

Bashir shook his head. "That's not the point. No, it isn't. I really don't want there to be any misunderstanding -- "

"There isn't any misunderstanding."

"I'm talking about between you and I," he insisted. "And, yes, I suppose Worf figures in there somewhere."

"You don't mean a word you say," Dax agreed.

"What?" Bashir paused. "I'm sorry but, what?"

"Julian, I know you don't mean a word you say," she assured.

Did she? That was interesting, and certainly disheartening. Bashir looked away from her again; he looked back. "I guess what I'm asking is does Worf know that?"

"I don't know," Dax admitted. A day ago she would have said yes. Today she had to truthfully say she didn't know. "He should."

"But does he," Bashir pressed. "I confess, it never entered my head that Worf would question you about anything. That's absurd. When you said you had an argument I honestly thought, 'oh, he's just acting like the Chief'. Never anything about you or I. Why would I?" He was looking for information. Wanting to know exactly what the argument had been about. How serious it was. The degree of threat hanging over her; he was sure there was a threat. 

"Let's put it this way," she confidentially patted his chest. "If Worf doesn't figure it out, he'll be spending an awful lot of nights alone."

He was going to kiss her. Another moment, another breath, he was going to kiss her right there in the shuttlebay, damn Worf and anyone else. As it was he said something extraordinarily provocative even for him. "That's the best news I've heard yet."

She looked at him for a long moment before she smiled with a teasing point of her finger. "See what I mean?"

She turned to leave, presumably to return to the bridge. "Jadzia…" Bashir jumped to catch her by the arm.

"Julian," she groaned. "Worf has to know you aren't serious, he has to know that." 

"No, nothing about Worf," Bashir lied in all honesty if that was possible. "I was wondering about my discourse I was telling you about?"

It took her a moment. "Did you finish it?"

"Not yet. But I am working on it. You will look at it? Look it over at least?"

"Just let me know," she promised.

"Quite," Bashir said after she left, blew into his cupped hands for the dual purpose of catching his shortened breath and blowing some life into them feeling cold and rigid and cramped. He sat down on the end of the shuttle's hatchway ramp aware of the sensation of pain in his stomach.

"What was that all about?" Sian remarked to his father resting casually against the wall just inside the hatchway, both of Anar's eyes on Kira forward at the console, waiting for instructions from her as to what she wanted him to do; she was still debating that. Both of his ears listening to the conversation in the shuttlebay.

"I'm not sure," Anar replied. "Something to do with an argument, a Klingon, and a Trill…

"And a medical discourse," his neck circled the corner of the hatch to eye the young doctor sitting on the ramp like he was in some degree of physical pain. "A Human drama perhaps; for him."

He was half tempted to tell Bashir his secret was safe with him but that wasn't necessarily true. It depended upon what the secret was and whether or not Anar was even interested in knowing it.Whatever the cause of the doctor's physical discomfort however, Bashir's sensory perception was working just fine. He knew someone was behind him. He turned around and stood up. An accusation of eavesdropping ready on his pursed lips he was silent and disdainful in his posture.

Anar smiled. "You have some sort of analysis running…"

"Yes, of course I have an analysis running," Bashir walked briskly up the ramp. "Several of them, as a matter of fact, primarily at the moment to test the integrity of the data banks, all of them to do with your miraculous cream. But then it would be rather helpful to have a preliminary idea of what we are looking for, if not at; the point of this expedition I believe. Other than the convenience of a ride home."

He halted, both in his irate speech and in the hatchway. Affording this uncle of Shakaar's the opportunity to either confess or contradict him? Neither, actually. Simply waiting for Anar to step out of the way and allow him the opportunity to take whatever necessary steps to preserve his analyses in the event they had to crash the systems in order to resurrect them; or whatever it was they were planning to do. They were certainly planning and needing to do something if they intended on complying with the request of no transporting. No probes. No surface scans of any kind.

"Greek fire," Anar offered, stepping aside. "Are you familiar with the term? Its common usage?"

"I should be, shouldn't I?" Bashir excused his way past Kira sprawled under the engineering console. "It is Terran, and a misconception the composition of some amazing incendiary device impossible of being extinguished died with its creators; it didn't. Unless they were several centuries old. What it probably did was become too expensive to manufacture…the same as everything else has a tendency to…andreally, by 2375, who cares?" he sighed as the display suddenly went blank. "Janice is hardly the first scientist not to have any idea how she arrived at her discovery. However, considering this is 2375 not 726, we really should be able to do something about that…fairly quickly," he glared at the lifeless console. "Given the chance…

"Do you mind?" his face suddenly appeared next to Kira's to chastise her. "I very well can't do anything after you shut us down. I'm not an engineer, but that does make sense to me." 

"Well, make it quick," she insisted.

"I am. As quickly as I possibly can."

"I am not sure if I like him," Anar acknowledged to his son.

"Or any of them," Sian nodded curtly.

"Federation," Anar agreed. "The Prophets test our cooperation in ways that are difficult."

"And disturbing," Sian assured.

"Extremely," Anar said. "He gave Janice back her life, I should be in his debt. And yet I find…" he surveyed Bashir with his air of impatience and nervousness. "I'm not so sure I like him. He is not a Guardian I would have picked, no more than the Klingon."

"_If they are Guardians." Sian reminded Anar he was basing his belief solely on a presumption. The Prophets silent since his last encounter with the half-bred child Ziyal more than a day past and moments before his timely introduction to four of Sisko's staff. Three to accompany him home, the fourth to remain behind; the Klingon. _

Waiting on the fifth one? The Prophets' mystical number five? "They come of their own accord," Anar murmured. It wasn't O'Brien or the Ferengi Rom. Neither of them there of their own accord. The Klingon wanting to be and being told he couldn't be. His place not there, his time not yet come to Anar's great relief and satisfaction. A Klingon truly less his idea of a Guardian than the disconcerting presence of the Federation. Who were the Prophets talking to then if it wasn't him or them? In words they either understood or didn't?

"Kira!" Bashir let out a yell, an angry flash of electricity sending him jumping back from the console his arm tingling, numb from his wrist to his shoulder.

"I told you to make it quick!"

"And I need you to give me half a chance so I can!" 

They were Guardians. As oblivious to their roles as he had once been. Anar's look for his son was amused. "Can you think of another purpose for them?"

Sian could think of none and he would leave his father to explain what he perceived to be their purpose to the settlers.

"Settlers," Anar repeated. Never had he dreamt he would ever look upon himself or any of his troop as settlers of any sort of all.

The shuttle set down without incident four days later several hundred kilometers into the interior of the planet's western continent on an expansive area of plains. Possibly a gateway to a valley, or a fertile cradle. Possibly one of the continent's last. Possibly accounting for Anar's protective position. Possibly the reason behind why an inhabitable planet was uninhabited other than due to the Cardassian occupation and its infamous history of strip mines; it was possible they would find out. The scientist in Dax believing the chances of Anar's reputedly once large, now small group of Maquis survivors having landed in the hospitable area were less than them having migrated to the region for that reason.

The planet itself was class M. Unnamed, though charted and numbered. The only recorded class M planet for several light-years on either side of the Bajoran-Cardassian line riddled with pockets of dwarf stars, asteroids, and meteors. Fifteen light-years away a single Federation outpost buried under a pressure dome marked the official barrier between known and unknown space.

Distantly placed, Anar's colony misleadingly called Dyaan IX was centrally located in its spiraling system of twelve worlds, warmed by twin yellow suns slowly on the rise and glowing red through the extensive pollution of the upper atmosphere. Supporting his claim of a world littered with abandoned mines, but also supporting the theory of an old world with cumulative environmental damage spanning several thousand years not the mere Cardassian fifty. The mean temperature of the exterior was a chilly 35, windless, a taste of water in the air. The shuttle's chronometer reset itself to read an average day length of 27.3 hours, less than a third of it estimated to be daylight; it was winter. Dax pulled her gloves out of the pocket of her field jacket to pull them on.

Outside Anar moved toward the welcoming arms of his colony living somewhere between the primitive and the absurd, Julian's words a few short hours from then. Right now Dax counted two children. One a fragile, unhealthy female somewhere around five Bajoran years, the other indistinguishable at its early months, four women and upwards of twenty men. Three of the males visibly deformed with loss of limb, several of the colonists missing one or both exterior ears upon closer scrutiny including the child breaking rank to run toward the Elder. 

The striking, startling view lent credence to the words of Klingon attacks and long-term, hard-core Bajoran Resistance/Maquis in a battle to the death rather than a rampant infectious bacteria devouring victims of Rigelian plague until halted by a jar of miracle cream.

Either that or the loss of the exterior ear was an adopted defiant act, severing and separating the Maquis' ties to their family heritage and Bajor Prime and its embraced politics that they denounced. That seemed unlikely given the symbiotic relationship of the Bajoran people and their culture, and the point that the exterior ears of Anar and his son while lacking the traditional earcuff, were intact.

Unless the Elder's desire to steer his people down a different path other than the one previously taken included discouraging unacceptable self-mutilation?

Either way it cast the individual Anar into a far more understandable light. As it cast Doctor Janice Lange and Gul Anon Dukat and his squad from weak, fragile, gullible Human and beastly, cruel Cardassians, to Lange being almost inconceivably courageous to live and endure beside the Bajoran survivors, and Dukat and his men to being inconceivably compassionate, protecting the small township, not adding to their strife.

As regardless of the cause or the cosmetic, unless the colony's membership was infused it would not survive past its second generation.

Dax stood there trying to decide what she believed, never so glad Worf was not there.Julian already backing away to grab a medical field kit, soil and plant samples the farthest thing from his mind. Kira, conspicuously silent.

"Federation, too?" The ethereal looking little girl clamored up into Anar's outstretched arms to throw her head back with a questioning, dubious groan for the notorious Starfleet uniforms emerging from the clumsy, ponderous shuttlecraft.

The scene had Dax flashing back to another Bajoran child, comfortable and unafraid of Anar throughout the short time he had held her captive on the station's Promenade in his flight to escape Benjamin. She bit her smile at this one's loud, bold candor. The clarity of the voice and analytical ability suggesting the child was much older than her petite stature implied. 

"Yes, Federation. Hush, child, and greet your father." Anar instructeddiplomatically.

She obeyed. Quickly, briefly acknowledging her father, apparently Sian, to return to wondering if they were under arrest, who Kira was, and suddenly, "Where's Janice?"

The child's eyes grew wide with perplexed surprise. Her notice quickly spreading through the group, curious about Kira, shifting to cold disdain with the appearance of Dax and Bashir, and silence upon the realization one of them was missing.

"Father…" The female with the infant in her arms turned from her mate, also apparently Sian, to reach for Anar. She was an average-height woman, a dark shadowing around her eyes.Slender, strength in her angular face emphasized by shoulder-length brown hair pulled back severe and tight. She looked Kira's age, mid-thirties and was probably ten years younger.

"Cardassia Prime," Anar held a Federation data padd in his hand; no explanation as to where he happened to come by one. "She sends her love with promises to visit soon; Anon and Pfrann as well."

The child erupted into a screaming, wailing tantrum of rage and tears, seizing the data padd to violently fling it aside. Wrestling and kicking against Anar's coaxing, consoling efforts ignored and wasted. 

"Janice's little Nadya?" Bashir was behind Dax, his field kit slung over his shoulder, attempting to discreetly activate his tricorder and get a general health reading on the group. "If that child's nine years old, she's not only out of control and spoiled, she's dwarfed."

"Possibly…" Dax agreed with a glance down on the tricorder. "Or possibly genetics. Anything serious?"

"Radiation poisoning," Bashir said coarsely. "She's a chronic leukemic. Someone was far too close to someone's warp core gone awry at far too young an age. As far as the rest of them…reasonable, I suppose, excluding our Mister Anar who's as healthy as a horse; this is madness. These people need assistance, help. Not some transitory -- "

"Miracle?" Dax said. Bashir looked at her. She smiled slightly in apology. "Sorry. I could be wrong but I think they're gathered to welcome not only Anar and Sian, but also Janice home, and she's upset?"

"She's nine," Bashir repeated.

"So?" Kira said at his side.

"All right, fine," Bashir slapped his tricorder closed. "They're your people, you're culture, you're right, I'm wrong, and the situation is still madness. That diagnosis stands."

"I have to agree with that," Dax said to Kira.

She nodded around. "Benjamin should see this."  
Yes, Benjamin should. Not to inflame him, he was angry enough. In the meantime they were there and seeing it. "What do you want to do?" Dax asked Bashir.

"Do? Examine them, of course. Treat them. That child is suffering with an utterly curable condition. Chronic adolescent leukemia doesn't even exist in our world, hasn't for centuries. I don't care what the cause. The word is chronic. Suffering. Curable -- "

"Julian…" she suggested.

"And countless other therapies to assist her with whatever other genetic mutations her experience may have dealt her," he argued. "In the meantime she's probably being fed some bizarre herbal-berry concoction; this is Bajoran space, they are Bajoran. Not some primal community we risk dazzling like gods from the heavens. We can't be in violation of the Prime Directive, we are the Prime Directive."

And they were former Maquis. Bounties, Dax was sure on all of their heads. It wasn't the Prime Directive they risked violating. "What do _you want to do?" she solicited Kira gawking at Julian like he had lost his mind, which he had, simply temporarily._

"Wait a minute," Kira said. "Just…wait a minute." Her resolve was to ask Anar there and now, probably for permission for Julian to set up shop; if she could get a word in over the child's screams.

"Feel better?" Dax smiled at Bashir passing his hand through his hair. He had been doing that a lot the last four days. "You need a vacation."

"No, I don't need a holiday," he said. "I'm sorry, it's just not what I expected to see; men without arms, children without ears. In that way, yes, it's a bit of an _optical overload."_

"And you're thirty-three," she nodded.

He got what she meant whether or not he agreed with her. "We're not even there yet," he reminded.

That was true. It was a ten mile walk to the township, if it was a town. Dax wasn't sure herself what to expect. She returned to thinking about mysterious, deliberate. Suspicions she should have been able to put down with the understanding the settlers were anticipating Janice, Anar, Sian, not the Federation. Except that Anar had been aboard the _Tir prior to boarding the __Defiant from where he very easily could have issued a deep space transmission to his colony with instructions to make it look good._

It also didn't explain the shuttle. Dax eyed the Ark. When Anar had been allowed to issue a transmission to the planet surface with his arrival time and location there were no questions from his township as to how he managed to get home. Who provided him with the transportation to the distant world since apparently he did not have his own. The town people either took as much for granted as their leader, about their leader, or there was another answer. They also expected someone else.

"Anon Dukat," Julian was over his emotional breakdown and thinking the same thoughts she was. "They expected the _Tir, or whatever Cardassian battle cruiser or transport. It didn't have to be the __Tir specifically."_

"Oh, well," Dax shrugged because it wasn't the _Tir and they were not Anon Dukat._

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I read concern in your face, Elder." Her words cloaked, their meaning clear, Elise stroked her troubled daughter's hair soothing her screams of anger and sobs of pain.

"You read no concern," Anar answered as quietly. "Kira Nerys is Bajoran liaison to the Federation's Deep Space Nine; Terok Nor. The two with her are of the science community, here to investigate Janice's cream. It is everything we have wanted, and everything Janice has dreamed for us."

"Kira Nerys," Elise heard and stopped listening to anything else; Anar knew she would. Kira's smart approach discouraged either of them from saying anything more.

Kira eyed the head with its thin strands of brown hair buried in Anar's chest, the breast of his borrowed jumpsuit twisted in her fists. "Doctor Bashir wants the settlers to have a complete medical screening and physical."

  


"What?" Anar said, not because he couldn't hear her over his granddaughter's crying. Doctor Bashir had his surprises when he wasn't being troubled by whatever wisdom of the Prophets continued to plague him with his periodic bouts of nervousness and temperament.

"Will you just leave her alone?" Kira impatiently attacked the woman not helping matters in her mind, roughly pushing Elise's hand away. "She's upset."

Dax winced. Kira no better than Julian in his parental instincts, both of them worse than her admittedly awful despite her experience of having been a mother and a father in her past lives. The Bajoran woman stared at Kira. "She's my child."

What could Kira say to that? Dax agreed Kira couldn't say much.

Anar bit back his surprise and amusement for Kira's reaction, wisely settling for introductions to prevent any further misunderstandings. "Elise, my daughter, wife to my son. Their son San. And this is Nadya," he identified the child in his arms, hesitating slightly, aware of what Kira could plainly see for herself. "Nadya has had her trials. It may take a little while for her to understand Janice is not lost. Our numbers not less, but two more with Anon and Pfrann-- "

"Where's Dak'jar?"

Dax could not hear the child's mumble that her mother could.

"Dak'jar?" Elise turned away to look around, realizing another of them was missing, and so their numbers did grow less.

"With the Prophets," Anar did not lie.

Elise's hardened face set. "We pray -- "

"Don't," Anar interrupted.

She stared at him, a hiss of disbelief escaping her lips. "Dak'jar? A betrayer?" Her stare shifted suddenly back to Kira, icy in her review of the Bajoran liaison officer.

"Major Kira Nerys," Kira's head tipped stiffly.

"Bajoran adjunct to the Federation," Elise agreed. "Watch your step among us, Kira Nerys, and watch your back. We will be watching ours." 

"Whatever," Kira shrugged. "Well?" she asked Anar again about Bashir.

Who did have his surprises. "That will be fine; generous," Anar extended, unable to resist adding a wry smile. "Unless for some reason you think we might be contagious?"

"You're not," Kira walked away, leaving Elise to gnash her teeth like a Klingon targ.

"Kira Nerys. I would welcome Tora Naprem, whore to Dukat to my home first. My father apparently sees something I do not." 

"We'll discuss it," Anar offered before he realized what she had said. "Tora Naprem…" he repeated stunned by the announcement. 

"Ziyal's mother," Nadya rubbed her eyes red and swollen.

"Here among you?" Anar insisted. "Tora Naprem?"

"Ziyal," Elise resumed her stroke of her daughter's hair. "In comfort to the child's fears. It's the first time the four -- the three of you have gone away," she corrected that to deny Dak'jar whose name they would never speak again. No more than they spoke of Hawk or Shakaar Adon.

"I don't know," she said slightly impatiently to Anar's scrutiny. "Something the child says. You see Prophets I do not. That doesn't mean they are not there. Janice is with Anon you tell us?"

"For life," Anar replied. "He swears his loyalty, allegiance and protection, Pfrann and all others at his side. Our numbers grow by thirty-six not only two."

"Of course he does," Elise smiled at Nadya trying not to be interested. "We swear ours as well and pray for love, luck…and children," she kissed her daughter's brow.

"It's all in the letter," Anar coaxed. "Do you want your letter?"

"No," Nadya stubbornly refused.

"Not even for later?"

"No," she said but took the padd her father collected to give her, holding it close to her chest.

"Excellent," Bashir sprinted for the shuttle when given the approval by Kira for a group health check. No sooner however than had he opened the outer hatch of the cargo hold for the equipment, he stopped. The townspeople were walking away.

"Where are they going?" he asked.

"Home?" Dax guessed.

"Home? What about…" Bashir stopped again to begin yanking the equipment out. "Never mind, I guess we'll just 'follow them home'. This is ridiculous. It really isn't me. I think; in a straight line, if you will. You can follow my line of thinking from here to there…" he was gesturing with a biofunction sensor, sticking it in Dax's hand and draping a second field kit over her shoulder.

"It's a good thing we brought more than we need," she agreed.

"Rather than have to cart all this stuff back ten miles?"

"We have to carry it back at some point," Kira lent her assistance.

"Key being at some point," Bashir started out, "not twice a day."

"Maybe," Dax cracked wickedly in his ear, referencing that neuro kit he so generously misplaced.

"That's our secret," Bashir reminded. "There's nothing to say I couldn't have just lent it to a colleague -- Starfleet, I might add, not simply Federation."

"With an established practice on Bajor Prime."

"Assignment, anyway," Bashir grinned. "There's no saying the Sorges will return, is there? They just might decide to chuck it all. Cardassia Prime turning out to be the retirement hovel they've always dreamed of; Dukat making them an offer they can't refuse."

"Along the lines of my wife is Human," Dax nodded.

"Quite," Bashir said. "And you are the only two on the planet qualified to treat her whether it's for a hangnail, or what it's for. The Cardassian medical society has enough to do working to reestablish itself since the Civilian revolt, Klingon conflict, never mind the Federation-Dominion war, without choosing now to broaden its horizons to include Human anatomy and physiology, at least as an elective; which eventually they will if they want to compete. They're proclaimed xenophobics, after all, not isolationists; clearly not isolationists plundering the galaxy every chance they get. Admittedly somewhat of a psychological contradiction from our perspective, but apparently not theirs…

"How's your neck, by the way?" he threw in at random. "Would have thought you'd at least be in need of a therapeutic massage by this time."

"My neck?" Dax presumed he meant her, he was talking to her.

Bashir grinned again. "Just asking. You and Worf have managed to patch up whatever differences, haven't you?"

"I think I'll ignore that," Dax decided after giving it some thought.

"No, don't. I'm interested, really. After all we did just sort of leave everything hanging, didn't we? Worf willing and able to be coerced into seeing the light…or not being able to?" he tried to keep the desperation out of the claimed interest, presuming things had worked out after four days and not wanting them to have. "I wouldn't know, I haven't heard. Obviously laboring under the impression I would have heard, at least from you. Rather than simply be left wondering, for that matter left to stumble over you in the dark…in the event things hadn't worked themselves out between the two of you?"

That wasn't exactly the way Dax remembered they left it, but that was all right. She heard him pushing for information he waited four days to push for. Four days hardly suggested desperation of any sort for any reason. Worf continued to be jealous, wrong, and sleep alone. She continued to be annoyed, right, and barely able to sleep at all – honestly obsessed with being right and deeply troubled by four plus centuries of accumulated wisdom that sided with Worf in spite of herself.

Julian continued to be Julian, safe and removed. She eyed him. "My neck is fine," she assured. 

Bashir laughed. "Discounting the notoriously cramped conditions. In regard to quartering its crew, the _Defiant's little better than the Ark…_

"And then there are those who should be so lucky that a narrow, hard bunk is theextent of their complaints." His mood turned bitter three hours later when they ended their cardiovascular workout in the mud-soaked center of a classic example of Bajoran stagnation.

Bashir couldn't tell if the town was a hundred years old, much of it spent under Cardassian duress, or a thousand years old and therefore simply old and deteriorating underneath its occupants with its scarred, vacant buildings framing the Town Center and Temple like long-dead sentries still at a post. The community square defaced as the rest of the landscape with its ring of drainage ditches dug to relieve the saturated foundations and earth.

"This is absurd. These people are living somewhere between the primitive and the absurd."

He spoke those words louder, the distinct sounds of silence around them supporting his critique. He didn't need his tricorder to tell him their power sources were limited, if in existence at all, he could see they were.

"Either that or their purpose is for irrigation," Dax proposed they just might find fields beyond the cold horizon of houses and unkempt woodlands of brown leafless saplings and vines.

"Actually the furrows are for both." Anar directed them toward the Town Center where it was bitterly cold once inside the heavy walls of its welcome hall cast in shadows of daylight. The conjoining lengths of corridors sinking deeper and deeper into darkness as they moved away from the available natural light, until one's eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and realized they were approaching a door, not the rim of a black hole.

"When it rains, it has a tendency to rain; this year's harvest anyway," Anar strolled along the broad, stone passageway with familiarity and ease. "Last year we were in drought conditions for much of the year. We suspect it's commonly somewhere in between. The land is generally dry and rocky, particularly in the highlands; the mines," he winked at Kira. "Ideal for water run off and flash flooding. In all we stay reasonably entertained."

"There are ways around that, aren't there?" Bashir answered indignant for them. "Without attempting to pit your strength against Nature?"

"Are there?" Anar set Nadya down on her feet for the first time in their ten mile hike together; she still clung to him. Her face buried in his thigh, quieted to sullen anger as he pit his strength against the seam of the corridor's doors to force them open. They were once again in the bright cold light of the outside, perched on a ledge overlooking a massive ragged pit, torn into the earth and half-filled with frozen water and architectural debris.

"I have it," the Trill volunteered, effortlessly holding the door open for the town's people to silently file past following their leader as they had fallen into step following him from the shuttle's landing site. 

"The last person we saw do that was Cardassian," Anar purposefully mentioned, taking Nadya by the hand for their short walk along the ledge.

"Anon," Nadya spoke with a nod of her head.

Anar smiled. "Yes, it was Anon, wasn't it? Tired of taking the long way around."

"And Pfrann," she said not to suggest a favorite between the brothers.

"Pfrann as well," Anar agreed.

"Yes," Nadya eyed the pit and Janice's letter in her hand.

"Do you really want to do that?" Anar cautioned, visions of having to repel into the abyss and retrieve the padd for her.

"Maybe," Nadya settled for now glaring back at Kira walking just a little too closely to them for her liking. "Move, Federation," she warned her, "in our direction and we'll put you in the pit with the Klingons."

"Bajoran," her grandfather muttered in correction, identifying Kira's brown uniform, drab by comparison to the sleek Starfleet design.

"Same thing," Nadya dropped his hand to run toward a second door, Janice's clinic and laboratory beyond where her Bajoran mummy continued to lie in her preserved and tranquil state.

"She's upset," Kira replied to Anar's cautious look.

"Yes," he said.

She shrugged. "I'd be, too."

He smiled. "Kind of you to understand, nevertheless."

It was something more than that. Bashir dallied in the first doorway with Dax. "Do you think it's intentional?"

"Well…" she looked over the frozen cauldron of rubble, above to the ravaged floors of the Town Center. "I would say the bombardment was direct, though weakened, probably well out of range of most standard planetary defense systems…Or did you mean everything?" she smiled at his perplexed expression.

"Yes, of course it's intentional," Bashir decided with disgust, making his way across the ledge in time to hear Janice's precious Nadya threaten to heave Kira over the side into the chasm with the Klingons. "Klingons?" he stared down into the gruesome mangle of rock.

"They make great fill," Dax whispered wickedly over his shoulder; he stared at her.

"You're joking."

She was. She wasn't so sure about the child.

"This is too much," Bashir decided again, that time with a snap. "Excuse me, but we're hardly invaders, we've been invited for God's sake…"

He walked through the door into Janice's lab to stop short at the sight of the Bajoran mummy suspended in stasis. Annoyance forgotten, everything forgotten, he dashed for the cadaver uttering, "This is fantastic…"

Kira was as startled, gawking, not necessarily as impressed as Bashir by what she deemed irreverent mishandling of the dead.

"Dolores," Anar introduced them.

_"Dolores?" Kira echoed, further incredulous and incensed._

Anar's cool, blue eyes twinkled in reassurance. "She doesn't seem to mind."

"She doesn't have much of a choice," Dax agreed with Kira's flushed face as Anar turned from them to rescue Julian from Nadya if the need be, not only the mummy from any potential mistreatment by the Federation.

"What do you want to know?" Nadya snatched Bashir's medical tricorder from his hand.

"Janice has been particularly meticulous in her examination," Anar explained.

"So am I," Bashir smiled down on Nadya. Agreeing with Dax to the extent that the child was only nine and therefore a reasonable degree of apprehension was to be expected. "And, yes, all right. I suppose we can begin with you…"

He followed her to what looked like some sort of sacrificial table positioned off center in the large room dominated by a Cardassian replicator and an extensive piece-meal assortment of integrated technologies, not excluding Klingon. 

That included the examining table that to Dax looked very much like a table pried free from its Klingon commissary.

"We were rather limited in our choice insofar as what to use for beds. If it was a platform…" Anar said.

"It became a bed," Dax nodded. "What works, works." What apparently did work, here anyway, was the lighting, the doors, the extensive assortment of consoles and displays. Nadya hopped up to sit on the edge of the table, busily examining herself with Julian's tricorder that she either knew how to use or was quickly figuring out. Julian continued smiling, comfortable and competent in his role as pediatrician.

"And, well…" he was saying with an encouraging point of his finger, "why don't we start with your ear?"

"The Klingons took it." Nadya proudly displayed her ability with the Federation tricorder to her hovering mother.

Bashir managed not to seek Dax's reaction to the grim exposure, though he wanted it. Wanted to know if she heard what the child said, which Dax did. Wanting to know if it penetrated, which he believed it did. His smile remained fixed and in place, his attention on the child. "That wasn't very nice of them, was it?" he agreed.

Nadya shrugged. "They didn't get very far."

Perhaps they hadn't personally but others had apparently gotten quite far along their blood-drenched path of madness and mayhem with 1800 original Maquis dwindled down to thirty-five. Bashir reached for his tricorder with a sigh, quickly retreating in horror when the child's teeth sank suddenly, deeply, and painfully into the flesh of his hand to everyone's entertainment except for his.

"What do you think you're doing?" he insisted angrily as Dax tried not to laugh along with the child's parents and the rest of her motley group.

"Put you in the pit," Nadya reminded him.

"Damn you and your pit; put you in the damn pit," Bashir muttered, submitting to Dax's soothing, antiseptic intervention, gently calming and clearing the angry red scrapes made by her vile little teeth.

Dax's approach to the incident was somewhat different than his. "She's cute," she agreed, trying to encourage him see the humor in the child's unprovoked and unwarranted attack.

"Cute?" Bashir echoed. "She's a little monster. What atrocity she hasn't threatened she's attempted."

"Well…maybe she thought you were going to hurt her."

"Hurt her," he said. "I'm a doctor, not a Klingon, why would I hurt her? For God's sake, Dax, she bit me!"

So she had and a moment later he was fine. Not so could the same be said for the child after her encounter with the Klingons. Dax was also thinking about the 1750 plus colonists who hadn't survived and really not wanting to think about them. "Maybe in warning for you not to try?"

"Don't tempt me," he threatened, not meaning a word. "Remind me to remind you of that in the morning; if we're here come morning to remind each other of anything." Of that he meant every word.

Dax smiled. "Where else would we be?"

Where Bashir certainly wasn't going to be was there. He didn't care if it was a hundred miles back to the shuttle. He'd be out of his mind to spend any more time with the de-evolving group of savages than he had to, especially overnight. Not that it wasn't pitch dark when they finally left, it was. Later than he wanted to leave, though not as late as it looked. Cold, moonless, and misting light frosty rain. In the meantime though he had this idea of wanting to conduct a physical examination of the survivors. Why, he couldn't really remember other than it was his chosen path in life. Saving lives, not endangering them, particularly children.

"How do you want to handle this?" Dax asked, willing and capable of being a medical assistant if he wanted or needed one.

"Yes, well…" What Bashir also couldn't see was the reason and purpose for everyone to be congregated in the room. Not that there was necessarily some other room for them to congregate in while waiting their turn. "Start," he said. "I guess just start…

"And who I'd like to start with are the two children," he informed Elise. "Your two children, I take it?"

"Mine." She offered her son's name and age, her daughter's he already knew. "San is five months."

And whole, Bashir noticed with both exterior ears intact. "Some point after the Klingon visit, apparently…" he scanned the curious infant intrigued by the tricorder, not poised to attack.

"Two months after the plague," Elise assured.

"Yes," Bashir was reading her son's levels of ryetalyn to be significantly lower than hers. "But then yours are quite sufficiently high enough to protect both of you throughout gestation. My question would be the birth was normal to your understanding?"

"And what's your understanding, Federation?" she retorted. "Of my species?"

Bashir grinned at Kira. "Beyond suspecting Bajoran females are rather the envy of any number of others with their serene, labor-free deliveries? Reasonable. What I didn't know, I did have to learn in a hurry, particularly when not to become involved and that was during the birthing process."

"_You have children?" Elise challenged Kira with cold emphasis. The thought a startling one for Anar as well._

"No," Kira fended off the question. She was lying. Bashir's remark made no sense if she wasn't.

"The birth was normal," Elise told Bashir.

"Glad to hear that. And your son is fine; healthy."

Her daughter was another story. Eight hours later Bashir completed the scattered entries into his medical log. Bored in ten minutes the child Nadya was long gone with half the colony deciding they were bored, too. He could have spent eight hours with her rather than cataloging scars and missing body parts that at this point he could do nothing about with the equipment he had available to him, never mind what they had available to them. Obviously the lost limbs and ears could and needed to be replaced with a functional and cosmetic alternative rather than someone learning to work within the restrictions of a handicap they didn't need to work within and for some reason rather like Klingons, they took great pride in their developed thoroughly unnecessary abilities.

The brief screenings he did manage to secure of Janice's Nadya in an effort to determine the extent of damage at the chromosome level revealed excessive distortion to her DNA and genetic patterns, in any event utterly rejecting Elise as her biological mother, Sian hovering in a weak eighty percentile chance of being her father. Dax had a viable explanation ready on the tip of her tongue: DNA inhibitor and/or holographic transmitter-simulator. One similar to Janice's. One, Bashir hadn't been given the opportunity to find.Hesitant about expressing it in mixed company when she returned with Kira and Anar from their guided inspection of the village, really, hardly even a town, and found Bashir alone and packing.

"Done already?" Dax picked up his medical log with a smile, reading what he pointed out for her to read with a nod."Well, there are ways to determine that."

Yes, Bashir knew. "Ask." Ask and not be given an answer rather like agreeing to an examination and then not sitting still long enough to have one. "I can halt the leukemia right now, restoring her destroyed bone marrow by simple administration of a donation from her mother -- or father."

"If they're her mother or father."

"Compatible at least," Bashir agreed. "Yes, commonly that's a relative, close. Her father's definitely related, I'm just not sure if he's her father."

"Or compatible. Which he may not be," Dax said, thinking of Lange and her extensive background in forensic sciences.

Janice had to do whatever she could to help the child beyond berries and herbal potions. Dax looked around the room with its misleading display of equipment. The reality was they were standing in an engineering compartment, not a science or medical laboratory.

"Precisely," Bashir said. "What she could do.I'll take less than ideal if I have to and make adjustments from there. The point is I can't tell, certainly not from a standard screening. The only thing I can tell you is that child is needlessly ill and in pain."

Dax had heard him the first time he said that. Marveling at how he didn't seem to be able to associate chronic pain with the child's independent and somewhat cantankerous personality. "Maybe Kira can get us the answer," she smiled across the room toward Kira embroiled in an earnest discussion with Anar about something. "Possibly before dinner…If not stand a better chance at getting an answer than in getting Nadya to sit still," she forewarned Bashir. "Determining her parentage won't tell you if they're compatible. For that you do need Nadya's cooperation as well."

"Not really," Bashir slung his field kit over his shoulder. "Like I said, I'll take distant, if I have to. Her chromosome patterns are a mess, to put it bluntly. She's a mutant. Riddled with cancers, sterile, certainly, and generally bald under those wispy top hairs. Hospitalized with those extensive therapies I also mentioned she stands a fairly good chance of leading a fairly normal life. In the meantime what I'd rather not do is infuse her DNA structure with just anyone's, making her just anyone's little clone. In all it does make some mutilation at the hands of some Klingon rather insignificant. Her own people put her in the position she's now in, regardless of who was ultimately responsible for the tragedy. Her own parents; supposedly -- dinner?" he paused.

"Hospitalized," Dax stood there thinking.

"Out of the question," Bashir assured.

"She's Maquis," Dax understood. "It would take a Prophet or two to cut through that much red tape."

"Not really," Bashir wasn't sure what she meant about Prophets and it wasn't really important because he disagreed anyway. "It's called looking the other way. No reason to have to declare a colony legitimate-- "

"Unless you first claim it be illegitimate. It's called a cover-up."

"Yes, well, quite frankly I don't care what it's called."

"No," neither did Dax. "She's a cute little mutant."

Bashir looked away finally from her wide, velvety stare. "Perhaps mutant is a little harsh. I'm angry. Quite angry. To be perfectly honest, I didn't want to be here, and now I know I don't want to be here. We may not be invaders, but we are intruding. I do feel we are intruding."

Dax smiled. "What was that you were saying about dinner?" 

He wasn't. He thought she was. Dax nodded. "Those that don't eat, don't work -- it's a way of discouraging self-sacrifice," she explained to Bashir frowning at the philosophy that seemed somewhat backwards.

He scoffed. "Whose philosophy? Our Mister Anar's no doubt. Notice if there was one who refused a medical examination it was Anar. Not that he or we need one to determine his physical prowess, we have the Promenade and the murder of Martok's bridge crew…fair compensation I suppose for the massacre of 1800 plus Bajorans…"

CHAPTER NINE

They followed Kira and Anar for a short distance down a different dimly lit corridor into another surviving wing of the Town Center once again cloaked in aboriginal décor and atmosphere with resin-soaked burning wooden torches serving for both heat and light of what was clearly a communal dining area.

"Meals are taken with the community." Anar explained a habit carried forward from their days as Maquis and a necessity due to that ongoing difficulty with limited energy.Their power sources, he claimed confined to Janice's laboratory/surgical room/engineering suite for conservation and control. Communication between the village residents available via their Bajoran communicators tied into the communication console. Living arrangements cloistered in the immediate housing surrounding the Town Center were somewhat more private, though traditionally conservative with multi-generations residing together, as in the specific case of Anar and his son and his son's family. 

  


This was all general and miscellaneous information relayed to Dax and Kira during their tour. Dax found the daily living arrangements most interesting in that they were extraordinarily peaceable and cooperative on the surface with no apparent problems with greed or jealousy. If that were true, it was remarkable considering the ratio of male to female was nine to one with Sian and Elise mates, as well as the only two with children.

Though who really knew how much other than the numbers involved had changed for this particular troop of Maquis. Raiders, nomads. Living their lives among the stars, aboard their fighters and cruisers. It was feasible the ratio between the sexes had always been unequal with mates, marriages, and children few and far between, birthed more or less by chance. Quite possibly what Julian was thinking behind his frustration in wanting to determine Nadya's genetic background.

Dax had mentioned the surprising social accord to Anar who dismissed anyone having any interest in dividing the lands into properties or lots. Propagation of their clan however was on the villagers' minds since adjusting to their survival, simply uncertain what to do, particularly since they had no intentions of surrendering their independent ways, or for that matter their natural, what Julian called primitive, lifestyle.

Perhaps Anar's vision for his colony included something of it becoming a natural habitat, with Nature, or the natural, being the planet's allure.That was an interesting dream, if it was Anar's dream. Difficult to ensure in the long run when newer generations notoriously had newer and different ideas. 

Julian's interest at the moment was getting answers to his questions and escaping to the shelter of the Ark, not in breaking bread.

That was fine with Elise not exactly wanting to sit down with the Federation or Kira Nerys. "Leave us," she instructed Nadya there to help her mother in laying out the table for the evening meal when the Federation walked in.

The child obeyed quickly, already backing away from the table before her mother spoke. Elise turned to Anar.

"Elise…" he began with his coat of diplomacy.

She knew. They would discuss it. Except they had not discussed it, and discuss what? "No disrespect, Elder…"

"Perhaps words you should address to others beyond me," his head tipped.

She eyed him. From him Bashir with his expression of impatience and the Trill with her smile. She began setting out the smooth wooden plates, loudly. Kira's eyes rolled. Dax was more open, diplomatic, but honest.

"Actually, this isn't necessary -- "

"What isn't?" Julian interjected, startled, and of a clearly different opinion.

"Dinner?" Dax said, her look pointed.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, no, dinner's hardly necessary…" Certainly not the reason he was standing there at all. "Actually, the only thing I'm interested in is your daughter's actual parentage…" he took a step forward, his padd ready in his hand.

Elise dropped the plates to stare at him. Kira snatched the padd with her own challenging, "What?"

"Excuse me, I am a doctor," Bashir reminded Anar also interested, markedly so. "Not some tribal medicine man. Rather the same as I suspect you people are intelligent, if not educated far beyond…this barbarism," he concluded with a sweep of his hand around what could quite easily be mistaken for a Klingon dining hall, rather than Bajoran. Interesting, for while they claimed to abhor the Klingons, if not use their skeletal remains for landfill, they certainly didn't seem to mind living like Klingons, or for that matter conducting themselves as such. That he didn't say, he didn't have to. They knew very well what he meant, what he was thinking, and why.

"Answer him," Kira ordered Elise, able to decipher why the interest and immediately annoyed herself.

"Thank you," Bashir took his padd from her to extend it to Anar.

"She's our child," Elise said.

"That's a lie," Bashir assured Anar. "Possibly Sian's, who's possibly yours. Wouldn't have the faintest idea. Again, interested only that the child is in needless agony."

"We are aware of Nadya's illness," Anar took the padd.

"If not aware where, how and why," Bashir agreed coldly. "Irrelevant."

So it was. "There's been no deceit," Anar returned the analysis. "Respect for the child only and not wishing to amplify her suffering.Nadya has been ill for six years. Since coming to us Janice has worked tirelessly to stabilize her condition."

"With little success," Bashir snapped.

"Without also ever finding it necessary to attack or accuse,"Anar assured. "Elise is Nadya's aunt. Sister to the mother killed in the same accident that injured the child. Your own screenings tell you Nadya is possibly my son's daughter; and she is. Either my son's or my brother Hawk's. My granddaughter or my niece. What you condemn as misplaced pride is an unwillingness to burden the child with a father who abandoned not only his colony to the Klingons, but his daughter, rather than gift her with a father who loves and cherishes her --"

"Explains Dukat," Kira interrupted with venom; Anar stared at her.

Elise reared. "What explains Dukat?"

"Anon," Anar interpreted. "A unity found inexplicable."

"To who?" Elise damned Kira. "Shakaar Adon? Or you his whore? We don't call Anon, Dukat. Nor Pfrann. And they do not call us Shakaar. Adon liberated Gallitep and never knew his blood was there. Our leader was Kai Opaka. It is the Federation who decided what is spiritual cannot be political, and what is political cannot be spiritual, not us…Unless you're Sisko," her fingers clenched for a plate as she inclined forward. "You've been with the Federation too long, Kira Nerys, you need to return to the Prophets. Until then, you want to eat? Eat!" She sent the plate sailing, clattering across the worn, stone floor, the vermin immediately scurrying to investigate it.

"If you think you can do better than Janice with what is available to you to relieve my granddaughter, by all means do so," Anar told Bashir as Elise walked out. "You'll find us at your disposal, not to your vexation -- "

"Does that include you?" the Trill's smile interrupted.

Anar looked at her. "Without unnecessarily involving the child.Nadya is uncomfortable with reminders of my mortality; with reason. None necessary to share." He returned to Bashir. "If, through your analyses you prove conclusively whose child Nadya is, either by interest or necessity, keep it to yourself. We know whose child she is…Excuse me, now," he petitioned Kira, pleasantly, kindly, his hand touching her shoulder. "My daughter's anger, while righteous, is misplaced; unfair, in some ways," he smiled. "Certainly to you, and also in part, Adon. I likewise had no idea Sian was at Gallitep, nor even that I had a child. Something Elise conveniently forgets. Stay. Please. An invitation. A request. A plea."   
"Who could resist?" Dax wondered when he left to pursue Elise.

Kira shrugged. "She's no angrier than I probably would be."

"Or have been," Dax agreed. "Still, what probably is a bad idea…"

Kira nodded. "I'll be fine."

"We'll leave the light on," Dax promised with a reach for Bashir's arm.

"What?" he said.

"Tomorrow is another day?" she indicated the field pack that he may as well leave behind with the rest of equipment.

"What, and risk losing my tricorder?" he teased, allowing her to steer him out the door without protest. Much, anyway. "What about the screenings? He said yes. You may be confident he won't change his mind…"

"Tomorrow," Dax nodded. "We'll look over what you have and see if you need to conduct additional analyses…or if you're just nosy."

They were outside in the cold, the dark, and the wet. Bashir fastened his jacket, securing the data log inside the field kit for protection. "Thrilling. Before or after we fight over who gets to take a hot shower and who gets to make dinner?"

"Replicate," Dax said. "I'm sure you'll do just fine."

"Yes. Rather the same as I'm sure I'll find out if the water's hot or cold, or even working by the time I get to use it; as I said, thrilling. Certainly can't think of a better way to spend an evening -- whereupon one of us apparently can," he added slyly. "Unless you're about to suggest Anar's interest in Kira is strictly professional."

No, she wasn't about to suggest that. "She'll be fine."

"If not is a big girl," Bashir hunched deeper into his jacket, his hands stuffed in his pockets for warmth. "So are we. A big boy and a big girl -- how much farther?"

"Well…" Dax calculated, considering the tenth of a mile they had walked? "Ten miles."

"Marvelous," Bashir muttered.

An hour from then Kira was either eating dinner or being fed her head and they still had more than five miles to go. Another hour and Bashir thought he'd never see the end.

"You are the biggest…" Dax said when the shadow of the Ark finally loomed in the close distance some twenty minutes later.

"Pain, yes." Bashir was half-tempted to wrestle her for the shower except heknew he wouldn't win. That was all right he supposed since he was also half-tempted to strip off his wet, muddied clothes, crisp with evening frost and join her with risk of being killed. Which he would probably be killed, as it was almost worth the risk. He settled for a cup of coffee from the replicator and a selection of field rations remarkably identical in taste.

Still, it was better than cranberry borsch. Or whatever it was Kira was being forced to ingest in the warmth of the Bajoran homestead while he slowly froze to death in the Ark's cargo hold where their inventory of equipment was untouched, and the thermostat controls had once again failed, and Dax was deliberately taking an inordinate amount of time in the shower that would probably not be working by the time he got to use it.

"It's all yours," Dax announced just at the point he was about to lose consciousness, her wet hair neatly braided, her breath and face scrubbed clean.

"Consciousness?" she disputed his claim as he crawled out from under the engineering console to hand her an assortment of isolinear chips, all of which looked perfectly fine to her.

"Close enough," Bashir grinned. "I'm afraid the thermostat might be terminal, however."

"Which if it wasn't, I have an idea it is now," Dax agreed.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, I made dinner."

She noticed. Not only the petrified food supplement he was diligently attempting to rip into with his incisors, but the one he was extending to her to give it a try.

"And tea," he nodded.

She found it. Sitting in the replicator, dark and cold.

"Whose fault is that?" Bashir vanished into the shower where the frost on the mirror was steam and his teeth finally stopped chattering after the first five minutes or so of blissful warmth.

"Priceless is what you are," Dax replicated herself a fresh cup of tea, flipped open his field pack to insert the data log in the console and begin an analysis of Nadya's limited screening while she sighed at the assortment of isolinear chips in her hand.

_"Parameters are invalid." The shuttle's computer rejected the request._

Dax groaned. "No, the parameters aren't invalid…Julian, what have you done?"

To the shuttle's data bank? Nothing. The parameters were invalid. She had the wrong medical log. A quick scan of the contents confirmed the subject of study was her. Dax stared at the display, reading what she couldn't believe she was reading.

"It's completely open for discussion as well," Bashir said quietly at her shoulder several minutes later. Dax had no idea how many, or how long he had been standing there watching her read. "That is the whole idea."

She looked at him. Everything she wanted to say she didn't, couldn't, the words simply wouldn't come out. Ones like betrayal, deception, deceit; invasion. If he ever wanted to hurt her, he had hurt her. She got up from her seat at the console and walked away.

"It's a start," Bashir dallied for a moment before he made that decision, and it was. A start. He removed the data log from the console and followed her.

He was out of his mind to follow her, clearly out of his mind. The rage, fury, anger burning inside of her was overwhelming. Dax moved aft to the midsection with its commissary and stopped. Nowhere to turn, nowhere to move, the interior hatch to the cargo hold behind her, Julian lying in wait in front, the most unbelievable expression of care and concern on his face; she struck him. Before he so much as finished saying another word.

"God!" Bashir gasped as her hand struck his face, sending him pitching into the wall and down on all fours as he struck the door frame. "Oh, quite! That's the damn answer to everything, isn't it!" he screamed after her as he knelt there struggling to right himself into a seated position, blood pouring from his ruptured sinus and torn lip and she stalked off, leaving him to get to his feet the best way he knew how.

"Son of a bitch…" he pulled himself up to an unsteady stand, clinging to the door for a dizzying second or two before heaving himself after her.

"Jadzia!" Bashir half-staggered half-fell through the hatchway of the shuttle, misjudging the slant of the ramp in the darkness, tripping and catching his balance in the frozen mud attempting to undermine him.

"Julian!" Dax whirled around in threatening warning for him to stop only to bring herself up short at the sight of his bloodied face and jumpsuit.

"Quite," Bashir stumbled up to her to heave, his harsh, angry breath shallow, searing with pain. "What are friends for?"

"You deserved it," she said finally, coldly.

"For what?" he insisted. "For having the unmitigated gall to tell you the truth?"

"Truth?" she choked.

"Yes, it's the truth!" he shouted. "The goddamn God's honest truth. And as a doctor I cannot be expected to stand by and just allow it to happen -- anymore than I can be expected to as a friend -- especially when it concerns the woman I am in love with!"

She was gone. She stared at him enraged, aghast, and was gone, back inside the shuttle. Bashir stood there trembling in the frenzied intensity of his own anger, fear, his hand shaking uncontrollably as it passed over his hair. "Quite," he said and went after her.

She was in the cargo hold, looking the part of the caged beast she felt she was. Hampered and hemmed in by the careful arrangement of highly sensitive equipment that she could either destroy, ending their assignment before it began, or somehow gain control of herself. She made it past him, back into the commissary area. Pushed past him, actually, moved quickly without attempt of assault as he stepped back from her in a reflex action of self-preservation. 

She went no further than the commissary where she once again stopped."Love?" Dax's hands clutched at her hair before slamming down on the small center island, her face and neck wet with rage. "What do you know about love -- anything at all about love?"

"On the contrary," Bashir disputed sarcastically, "I know enough about it to know I've made more than just a sorry mess out of everything over the past six years. The same as I know I have my own lengthy list of emotional problems and/or personal characteristics in sore need of being addressed. Notwithstanding the rather predominatefeelings of gross physical inadequacy put alongside you…However irrational and vain that belief might be, it's also quite reasonable at the moment."

He snatched up his tricorder to check the state of his septum and see if it was merely deviated, gone missing altogether, imbedded in his frontal lobe, or if it just felt like it was. "All rather longwinded for look who's talking. If I have my Klingonese right, loosely translated this means I love you, Julian, in return…"

She took the tricorder away from him, slamming it down on the island top. His slight smile was sour, his throat congested by that point, his teeth heavily stained with blood threatening to choke him. "Nevertheless if it's all right with you I'd like to go to sleep with the same face I woke up with this morning."

She picked up one of the small, narrow stools to retreat into the cargo hold,dropping it with a bang in front of the makeshift diagnostic console. "Sit down."

"Yes, well, actually…" Bashir said.

"Sit," she directed, "down."

He sighed. "Yes, all right, I'll sit…I think you should know however with a Human it's generally simpler…" he said as he sat gazing up at her glaring down. "Yes, all right, fine. Do it your way. I'm confident you at least know what you're doing -- or at least believe you know what you're doing…And, yes," he agreed as she secured the second stool to kick it up next to him, "one more word and I'll be in stasis."

"That's about the size of it."

"Quite," Bashir closed his eyes, resting back against the console as comfortably as he could, feeling her clip the neural monitor in place, the muscles of his face and throat relaxing, his mind drifting into a state of tranquility.

It was twenty minutes before he could talk again. Ten minutes more he spent examining and reexamining his face, throat, neck and nose from every conceivable angle in the one available wall mirror in the one available toilet, while Dax attempted to sit patiently in the commissary at the center island drinking a cup of Tarkalean tea. Finally she called out to him, "Julian, you look fine."

"I know," his head popped briefly out the door to grin down the short length of corridor. "Just trying to make sure it all works and feels as well as it looks."

He still made her wait five more minutes or so before he meandered over to join her in her cup of tea.

"Julian…" Dax said again, calmly, after a few moments and a deep breath. "I want to talk to you…"

"Yes, all right," he agreed with a sip of the kiosk favorite heavily stained with that telltale replicator taste. "What would you like to talk about? I meant what I said. I am in love with you; deeply.I think you know that."

She looked away, not that she was looking at him, more her teacup. "I understand the premise behind your theory…" she looked back.

"It's not theory. Not how I feel, or Curzon. Both facts. Both intense.One extraordinarily exciting. The other brutally hard and cold -- "

"It's theory!" her fist hit the table, impatience getting the better of her. "And I'm sorry, Julian, but regardless of how much I understand what you are saying, I simply don't see it the same way you do!"

"Of course you don't see it the way I do. You don't see it all; you can't. That's the whole point."

"And I'm sorry," she was shaking her head, "if you don't agree with my choice in Worf."

"I believe you mean hate," he said. "Loathe. Despise. Your choice. The relationship. The man. Wishing him every conceivable ill will including death. If I had the strength or the courage I'd kill him myself -- if I had the violence in me." He picked up their cups to refill them.

"Worf is my husband!" Dax jumped up, the stool toppling over, her hand knocking her cup from his hand. It struck the replicator, shattering and bleeding the last drops of her tea down the replicator's front panels into a small puddle of black on the floor. 

"No, he's your mate," Bashir slammed his cup back down. "I beg to differ, but he is your mate. A remarkably prehistoric term, covering a remarkably prehistoric notion and the behavior of a remarkably primitive man -- Jadzia, this is madness. You are ill, desperately ill. Any other time you would be standing here agreeing with me that medical profile incontrovertibly shows no less than alien possession, but you can't see that. You said so yourself, and you can't see it. You are utterly under the control of Curzon, completely at his mercy --

"And for God's sake, darling, let me help you before he kills you, or Worf kills you for him!" he cried as she pushed him out of her way, rounding the island to exit and he fired his cup ahead of her into the wall. It shattered as hers had into pieces and splattering streaks of tea. She turned around, the eyes filled with Curzon, like a demon possessing her. The face, Jadzia's.

"Quite," Bashir stood his ground, his hands gripping the ends of the island. "Either that or we can spend the next hour playing doctor, patient like we just spent the last; first your turn, then my turn -- "

The Ambassador turned on his heel. 

"Either way," Bashir shouted after him, "I'm willing to gamble the one thing you hadn't counted on is Jadzia being as much in love with me as I am with her!"

The monster stopped again, that time sober, watching. "You're serious."

"I'm quite serious," Bashir nodded. "Quite serious."

Curzon relaxed, smiling gently in understanding, sympathetic rejection, "Julian…"

"I don't believe you," he interrupted. "Whatever excuse you're going to give, whatever defense you're prepared to make; I know. I know. And I'll stop you anyway I can." 

The eyes glistened with the challenge, Bashir half-expecting the demon to speak for himself. He was silent though. Bashir nodded again. "We'll see, you're right, we will see. In the meantime it's Jadzia's attention I want, not yours."

"You have my attention," she agreed quietly.

Did he? He picked up his tricorder. "Call it paranoia, darling," he admitted not that he needed to add any more personal failings to his dossier. He ran a quick screening and comparison analysis of her synoptic patterns; she let him. They were generally the same back through the emergence of Joran Belar, Dax's maniacal, murderous host prior to Curzon. Jadzia's emotional struggle to integrate the previously unknown Belar with her past lives was at a point in time after the issue of her fulfilling Curzon's blood oath to kill the Klingon Albino. Maybe he was blaming the wrong host; he didn't know. If it wasn't for the reality of Jadzia's developed obsessive passion for the Klingon Empire he'd say it was possible. The only thing he knew was Dax was Jadzia Dax this lifetime, given half a chance, which she wasn't being given.

Bashir sat down on the console, the tricorder cradled in his hands. It was like he was attempting to hunt and peck his way through a mind's bizarre ability to turn multiple personalities on and off at will. All taunting, _Catch me, if you can. Catch me, if you can. Curzon wasn't even an entity, merely a series of memory engrams._

"It's not…" he tried to think of a way to explain to her exactly what it was he wanted, what he was trying to do, beyond his ardent claim of loving and wanting to help her. "Some bizarre attempt to blame you for my shortcomings, failings. You're hardly to blame for anything at all."

"What is it an attempt to do?" she asked.

"Catharsis, perhaps?" Bashir guessed. "I just can't seem to get the image out of my mind."

"Janice Lange," Dax said. Her battered and beaten body lying on the examining bed. Her neck twisted. Her face and throat blackened from the hemorrhage of strangulation. Her brain, dead.

"You," Bashir slipped down off the console, daring to touch her biceps, feeling the bulging strength and power of the muscle pressing against the cloth of her uniform. "From the fractured ribs to the fractured vertebrae, the cuts, the bruises, yes," he nodded. "It's a consent to mutilation, darling. You are consenting to someone mutilating you, and there's only so much I can do."

"Julian, Worf isn't violent," she shook her head. "I don't know where you get this idea Worf is violent."

He was tempted to record her. He almost kissed her to show her what a kiss of love was supposed to feel like; he did neither.

"Contained violence, darling," he attempted to compromise even though it was a lie. "And if he ever loses control…" he stared at the arm he was touching. It could be five times its swollen size and she could never match the strength of the man who went round after round with one Jem'Hadar soldier after another in that arena on that Dominion asteroid two years ago.

"What about Dax?" he tried reasoning with the supposed meaning to her life. "What about the potential for injury to Dax? How many body punches do you think he can withstand? How many kicks, gouges -- you're not a Klingon, darling, and even if you were, you're still not a man."

"What?" Dax said.

Bashir thought about that. It just sort of slipped out but he thought about it anyway. About her utter grace and beauty she chose to ignore. "You're not a man, darling," he repeated. "I'm a man."

"You're a pompous, arrogant ass," she corrected. 

He knew he was. It was everything he was, succinctly put. "And blind," he agreed. "I must have been out of mind. I remember being annoyed about Worf…" he thought back to that. "Not even angry, really. Annoyed; smug. Who was Worf? What did I have to be concerned about? You adored me …Fairly idolized and worshiped me, is what you actually did, and I enjoyed every minute of it."

Dax was glad. "Julian, as much as I hate to shatter your illusions -- "

"They are illusions, aren't they? Particularly the one about believing you would always be there, and you aren't. Haven't been…and I miss you, darling," his hand touched her cheek, aware he was more than simply dangerously close to her. "Oh, how I've missed you. I want to go back. Back to who we were. Should have been…"

He was kissing her. Feeling his heart start to pound harder and his pulse begin to race as his arms tightened around her. His hand treading its way up through her soft sable hair, and he seemed to lose all sense of everything except that he was kissing her.

CHAPTER TEN

Dax was startled. Too startled to do much more than stammer in between breaths. "Julian…we don't have a past…"

"No," he gasped in her ear, "but I think we're about to."

He couldn't be serious; he was serious. What was more, he was Julian. Dax came to her senses. "I can't do this…" she pushed herself away from him to stand there in nervous uncertainty.

"Julian, I can't do this…" her hesitant darting glances for the door were almost frightened. She remained rooted where she stood, awkwardly tugging at her wet braid of hair. 

"No, it's all right," Bashir hung onto the console, endeavoring to catch his breath that he seemed to be holding for some reason. "Neither can I, actually. I meant everything I said…"

  


Dax stiffened; rigid and poised she turned on him in hostile expectation. "But?" 

Bashir paused. "But what? I meant everything I said. Somewhat overwhelming that's all to realize how much I mean it…

"Quite a bit overwhelming, actually," he admitted to the anxiety threatening to send him into a spasm of hyperventilation. He took another breath, his hands cupped over his mouth, attempting to dilute the overdose of oxygen.

"Yes, that's much better," he straightened up to smile at her, encouraged by her defensive stance."Neither can I do this -- not here. All due respect to the idiosyncratic habits of lovers desperately seizing the moment and each other, unmindful of the host of potential ramifications…

"I love you," he stared blindly back into her eyes clinging to his. "Jadzia, I love you. And apart from the point's hardly to attract anyone's attention other than yours, I find such practices to be missing two rather vital components: time and privacy. The idea's to make love to you. I'm not sure that's possible in an hour, or in the middle of a commissary; I know it isn't."

He was mad. In a desperate sort of way, but he was still mad. "What about Worf?" Her voice came close to failing her altogether. Its strength lost in a faltering, strained plea. "Julian, wouldn't I be lying to you as much as I would be to Worf?"

It was an interesting point Bashir supposed. One he really hadn't thought about. "I don't know. Would you?"

Would she. Of course she would. "Julian…" Dax's hand went to her head with a groan. "Don't do this to me. Please, don't do this to me."

"Do what to you? All I'm trying to do is tell you how I feel -- "

"Because I love you!" she suddenly, viciously, lashed out. Damming him, cursing him. "Yes, I love you, Julian!"

Hardly what he expected her to say, he'd admit that. "You love me…" he repeated, suddenly very angry again himself, furious as a matter of fact, and demanding an explanation. "Then I don't understand. What is all of this? Why Worf of all people for God's sake -- " He stopped. The fury charring her Trill spots black clouded her eyes with equally angry tears, triggering a sudden understanding in him of her expressed vulnerability, not violence, that he would have preferred to ignore. "You don't believe me."

"Oh, no, I believe you," Dax shook her head in scornful disgust for herself. "I believe you." And so she stood to lose a lot more than Mister Worf if she was wrong to place such hopes and trust in him, she stood to lose herself, or at least her heart.

"Good God, darling…" Bashir reached out to reassure her.

She knocked his hand away, occupying herself with unnecessarily straightening her hair as she exited into the cargo hold. He stopped her at the diagnostic console, finally succeeding in getting her to look at him.

"Yes, well," Bashir attempted to clear the tightness in his throat, "if I were feeling defensive I might say something like opening my heart to you, don't I stand a similar risk of being made to look an utter fool?"

"_If you were feeling defensive?" she said._

"I'm not," he believed. "Apologetic, yes, certainly. About a lot more than simply being deaf, callous and blind. I can't explain what I thought I was doing. Thinking, not thinking; don't I wish I could? For myself as much as for you."

He had his temptations, yes, he certainly did. His youth, his charm. His boyish innocence and dashing good looks. "Julian…" Dax sighed. "Don't you think if there really are things about yourself you would like to try and change you should do it for yourself?"

"Why? I do everything for myself."

"Well, maybe this is something you should," she nodded.

"No, you are what I should do for myself. Jadzia, I want to marry you. This is hardly a lark.I've never been more serious about anything before in my life."

Marry her. "Marry me…" she barely said.

"Yes, marry you. That is my objective…"

She flinched when he touched her chin but she stood there trying to read whatever it was she thought she couldn't read behind his eyes. "Dear God, Jadzia," he asked, "can't we at least go back to that part where I say I love you, and you say yes, I love you, Julian?"

"Yes, I love you, Julian," she said.

It was something similar to relief Bashir believed he felt. "Perfect," his fingers touched her mouth, stopping her from saying anything else. "Absolutely perfect."

It was an extended moment before she relented to kissing him back. Even before she did however, Bashir knew there would be no going back, not for him.

"What about Worf?" she persisted in wondering as they stood there, their foreheads touching, breathing each other's air. 

She didn't really want him to answer that. "Damn Mister Worf. I'm not trying to take anyone's wife away from them; I'm trying not to lose mine. It's not an affair I'm asking you to have with me. I want a relationship with you. For us to work on our relationship together. We don't have to be intimate if that's not something you're willing, or ready to be. We'll work it out. Worf, everything. I rather suspect we'll find the number of opportunities and time we are already together to be staggering, waiting only to be realized. You have my word not so much as a sideways glance otherwise."

"What makes you think a relationship isn't intimate?" she asked.

Then Bashir guessed he was asking. To be intimate. For her to spend the night with him. In their quarters, in his arms, in bed.

"If possible?" He wasn't sure it was possible without running a serious risk of inciting those obvious and potential ramifications, otherwise known as the unwanted curious and/or suspicious attention of Kira sure to return at some point, though probably not for some time yet.

"Yes, it's possible," Dax said.

"Come on." Bashir wasn't sure how long he stood there just looking at her before he picked up her hand, dropping it immediately as they exited the cargo hold, and not picking it up again until the door to the cabin swished closed behind them.

It was déjà vu in some ways to the innocent evening a few nights ago, not much above meeting in some secret alley, narrow and cramped with barely enough room for one to stand and move around freely, never mind two. "Still, it's much more my style, quite frankly," Bashir maintained. "Again no offense to lovers everywhere."

"Style?" Dax smiled for the first time, slightly. "Just how many times have you done this?"

"Made love to the woman I love?" He had her hand, drawing it around him and her closer. "Never. But I must say I'm certainly looking forward to it…"

They joined in what he called making love for the next several hours. It was different. Addictive, exciting, hot. Tame by comparison to what Dax was accustomed to with Worf. Bashir was just blind to it being simply incredible leaving him exhausted and starving for food.

"Food?" Dax laughed as he braved the cold floor to pull on his trousers and jacket.

"Neither of us had any dinner," he reminded. "What about just some broth -- actually, I think that's what I'm going to have. That, and another of those gourmet processed food supplements?"

"That sounds fine."

"I'll be right back," he promised as he kissed her and he was right back, handing her a cup of broth and prying her food supplement out from its vacuum packaging for her.

"Kira back yet?" Dax wondered as they lounged next to each other, their backs supported by the wall, eating their midnight snack and sharing an occasional smile.

"I don't know," Bashir admitted. "Didn't notice; not on my mind to notice."

Dax nodded. They fell silent again for a short while until he suddenly reached out, his thumb gently caressing her check. "Have I mentioned I love you?"

"Yes," she smiled.

"Good," he said.

"Have I?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "And it's hardly something I would mind hearing again."

"I love you," she said as they kissed, the kiss quickly becoming serious. They dropped off to sleep eventually on the bunk meant for one. At 0615 approximately Bashir woke up rather rudely when the sensation of falling turned out to be quite valid.

"Are you all right?" Dax joked to him rubbing his bruised shoulder and equally wounded pride.

"Quite," Bashir said. "Apparently Starfleet Command thinks its 'Captains', if you will, all have the libido of a monk."

"Or at least preoccupied with other things," Dax nodded as he worked at resettling himself as comfortably as possible.

"Explains Jake," he pulled her over on top of him.

"Benjamin wasn't a Captain at the time," she laughed.

"Neither am I," he assured. "Kira is; this away mission anyway."

At 0735 he was catching her up in his arms one last time, reiterating his oath not to incur any unwanted attention from Kira's direction, or anyone else's. It was an unnecessary concern. Kira had yet to return from her dinner with Anar.Bashir didn't know that at the time Dax left, thinking more about Curzon who also had the common decency to stay away. Why shouldn't he? Bashir grimly surveyed his shoulder in the small mirror on the toilet wall. What was it to Curzon how many lovers Jadzia felt it necessary to have? He had her by the throat, in near perfect total control. Jadzia no more inclined to turn her back on Worf or his home world that morning than she had been the evening before. Simply polite about it, pleasant, promising to discuss his concerns for her openly and sincerely.

"Damn it all," Bashir perspired with anger, jealousy already burning and eating away at him not five minutes after she left. "Damn what you call love; for that matter damn you." The flat of his hand slapped the mirror hard; it didn't break. He purposely struck it in a manner so that it wouldn't. "Damn it all," he said again, his sweating palm leaving a moist, damp imprint on the glass. "It's not a bloody game of darts. I love her. Perhaps that doesn't mean anything to you, but it does mean something to me."

It meant something. Alone in Kira's cabin with five minutes to collect her thoughts and duffel the hands Dax could still feel touching her throat were Julian's, hardly choking or strangling, though certainly quite emphatic. If he was right and she was under the spell of Curzon then something was wrong. It was very wrong. Obviously something was wrong. "Very wrong," Dax sat down on the neatly made bunk with a sigh. It was a minute or two before she realized there was something else odd and unexplained.

"Kira?" she stood up to have a look out in the corridor, the cargo hold and finally outside.

Nadya darted quickly away from attempting to listen through the door to the conversation in the dining area with the approach of her mother's rapid and impatient footsteps. Elise eyed her child, knowing her and the innocent look.

"Come here," she called Nadya to her. "You listen to none of them, you understand me? None of them. I don't care what they say."

"Federation," Nadya understood.

"And the Bajoran," Elise assured. "Kira Nerys."

Nadya nodded down to Janice's letter she held in her hand. "Ziyal's mother."

"What?" Elise said.

"After Tora Naprem died," Nadya extended her the padd. "It's all in Janice's letter. Kira took Ziyal to live with her on Terok Nor. They were friends."

"The child and Kira Nerys?" Elise took the letter in surprise.

"It's all right," Nadya said, "I'll tell Kira she can eat with us instead of the voles."

She dashed away, past Anar joining them to return to the dining hall. Anar glanced at Janice's letter.

"I know…" Elise accessed the padd. "We will discuss it…My father said nothing of her being mother to Tora Ziyal."

Where Janice had, along with a respectful request they accept Kira into their fold with kindness and trust.

"Who wouldn't Janice request we accept?" Elise rested back against the wall. Her hand tired as it passed over her hair, reading the letter and deeply missing the young woman she called her friend.

"No one," Anar agreed quietly.

Elise handed him the padd shortly. "She has words for us all.Anon and Pfrann, too. With promise of more to come soon. The decryption you'll need is included."

He knew. Anar accepted the padd with a joking smile. "To be installed after dinner; after the Federation leaves. Why invite trouble, when there is no cause for trouble."

"Trouble…" Elise stared back toward the dining hall.

"Not this time," Anar promised. "They are here only to see the grotto and collect samples of Janice's studies."

"Legitimacy," Elise recalled Janice's dream. "Another word for acceptance of what we have fought against for ten years."

"Point," Anar conceded. "But I think we're far enough from the Capitol to be able to maintain our independence."

"And too far to make use of its protection," Elise finally turned back to him, "unless the UFP installs an outpost here, right now, today…. And then the Cardassians will install another on their side. And then the Klingons will come again…No, it's all right," she waved for him to remain silent. "We accept Tora Ziyal, of course we do. Child of the Prophets, who would refuse? Those of us who can see her and those of us who cannot, we accept her mother Kira Nerys as well."

"Guardian," Anar nodded. "Anon's universal translator helps his ears, but not his hand. The words he stumbles over is mother of protection, not blood."

"You are speaking to a mother of protection not blood," Elise reminded him, Anar wishing she had not.Familiar, and yes, grateful for the lowly status of the male among her ancient matriarchal sect, there was still a difference when the mate, the male, the father, was Dukat. "You do not take what you do not want, nor give what you do not wish to."

"For no man, ever," Anar agreed. "Not husband, or father. But for the child always. Mother, village, or male, tool."

"Exactly," Elise said.

"Well," Anar smiled again with a gesture toward the dining hall, "at least Dukat is as insignificant as the rest of us in your prayer."

Elise scoffed. "Dukat. What does Dukat have to do with anything?"

His question. Then, as well as earlier, as well as later. Unanswered and nagging.

"You can eat with us," Nadya announced gaily to Kira's vacant look, bounding into the dining hall to collect the plate from the floor, wiping it clean with her sleeve and setting it neatly in place on the table.

"Okay…" Kira said cautiously, no Prophet hurrying to assist her in what was truly not her field of expertise; children. Finding them chaotic and confusing, morose one moment, crying and screaming the next, and now suddenly gregarious as this one was.

Nadya took care of any needed explanations for herself, scrambling to sit on the table next to the plates where she could look Kira in the eye, grinning all the while. "Ziyal would never forgive us if we put you with the voles."

"Ziyal…" Kira repeated, thinking everything at once, all of which could make sense and still she was stunned. "You knew Ziyal…"

"She's my friend," Nadya's head bounced gaily with her nod. "It's all in the letter …you can read it, too," she promised, to where she would have killed Kira an hour earlier if she had dared express an interest in touching it.

"Ziyal is with the Prophets!" Kira interrupted viciously to put the child in her place whether she was lying or telling the truth. She stared past Nadya to the colonists beginning to file into the room.

Nadya shrugged, happily reintroducing Kira to the haughty and the sullen as Ziyal's mother, not simply some Bajoran puppet of the Federation, the mood of the people changing as abruptly as the child's had. The small group of them almost equally divided between the child's adoration and Elise's watchful acceptance.

"Guardian," Anar corrected his granddaughter's enthusiasm presently, pleasantly at Kira's side, his modern dress of trousers, tunic and boots shed for the traditional robes and sandaled feet. Elise attempted to catch his eye. Wise suddenly to the elder's interest extending beyond the political, or even the divine, suspicious again, more concerned than amused. Anar ignored her.

Kira was oblivious to anything other than distaste and confusion with finding herself an object of the town's attention. Rapt, ardent, intense, it was invasive and inappropriate. She had a headache long before dinner ended, a thousand questions fended off or answered, a thousand more of her own pounding away inside.

Anar had his persistent lingering few. "Conversation?" he couldn't think of another reason or way of inviting Kira to stay, or perhaps he could.He smiled. "Or perhaps a chance to clear one before beginning another?"

"Yes," her answer was blunt, her nod, short.

The night air was cold, the Temple a short walk, warmed in the dark, golden light of her waxy candles and fragrant aromas. They sat in silence for several minutes before Kira finally rose in a huff of impatience to drop to her knees and attempt to begin a meditation; it was worthless. Her eyes opened after five minutes to eye Anar watching her.

"Perhaps conversation was the better of the two ideas," he agreed.

Kira shook her head. "It's late."

Not really. Though with a three-hour walk waiting in front of her it would be that much later, that was true. 

"I'm fine," she shook her head again when he suggested a robe for added warmth and company on her stroll.

"Out of the question. Lacking bands of roaming beasts, four-legged or two, the plains are flat, devoid of winter vegetation and without landmarks -- the lights of the township cloaked in mist ten feet in front of you," he insisted when she scoffed.

She still scoffed. "I was twelve when I joined the Resistance."

"I was five," Anar countered. "Fifteen when I grew tired of throwing stones and slurs and offered my services to the Federation in their Cardassian war instead."

She looked at him, his smile as sincere as his offer. "What else do you want to know?"

She didn't know. Everything. Nothing. "All right, fine," she accepted the company, not the cloak.

"Wiser choice than mine," Anar laughed. "For while the robe is comfortable, it is as impractical as the leather thongs for a winter's hike -- I'm freezing. Your understanding and patience, please. No need to disturb Sian or Elise, I have two homes. My son's and the Town Center. One for the comfort of a family, the other for solitude and contemplation…

"Occasional work, study…" he agreed as they entered the silence of the town hall where the light of a single burning torch turned her dark red hair plum, its bristling short crown damp with glistening frost. "Occasionally for other reasons," Anar admitted, enjoying the sight of her hair together with her company. "It should only be a moment."

It should have been. Anar sincerely hoping that it turned out to be longer, it did. The lack of formal furnishings Kira expected, the scattered disarray of various computer components. The Klingon bat'telh on the wall she did not. It transfixed her. Anar hesitated in excusing himself to change his clothes, settling for locating Janice's gift of wine.

"The last of two," he explained when Kira turned around to find him standing there with a glass of Bajoran Spring wine in his hand. "Bottles," he clarified.

"Thank you," she accepted, apparently forgetting or changing her mind about wanting to leave.

"Make yourself comfortable," he invited. Indicating there were a few choices as far as where they could sit. Some table from someone else's ready room or commissary, the floor or the bed made comfortable from an ample collection of thin mats.

"This is fine," she chose the floor, beneath the bat'telh suspended above them on the wall. She continued to eye it for some time as she sipped her wine. Finally she looked at him in unspoken inference and question.

Anar smiled. "I would have expected her to run in panic and fear, nor would I have damned her if she had, except she didn't. Not the first time, and not the last, only to help. Shield the children. Protect them. The wounded. Soothe their screams of fear and pain. We won the first battle. Lost the last, most would probably say.The scattered survivors lying in humiliating silence in the fields of dead."

"Lange," Kira nodded.

"Janice," Anar agreed.

"Whichever," Kira shrugged. "I'm sorry, I just can't accept Dukat…"

"Who can?" he said. She was looking at him again which was fine because he was smiling again. "_Prefect Dukat. Emperor. Butcher. Beast. Defiler.None of which Anon is, nor Pfrann. Something you should know even better than I."_

"Pfrann I can accept," her hand was marking the air, cutting it, reassuring him even she could see the difference between Dukat and his sons, or at least one of them. "I have no problem with Pfrann…"

"Why not?" Anar interjected, he thought quietly, and not because he had any difficulty accepting Pfrann whatsoever, anymore than Anon.

"He's a child!" her voice rose unnecessarily in defense. Her opinion was reasonable and true. He was perhaps reading far too much into her acceptance of Ziyal. Anar sipped his wine while Kira returned to studying the bat'telh above them.

"What even brought them here?" she asked.

A good question. One Anar might answer for her some day. "The war."

She scoffed. "You're a light-year from the Cardassian border."

Not quite. "The war," he maintained. "The same thing that brought the Jem'Hadar. Anon eventually, and myself initially. Not here to this world, no. But, yes, here to this sector -- its Cardassian side."

"An outpost," Kira nodded.

"You seem surprised," he was amused.

No, she wasn't surprised, only perhaps that they survived at all. First the Jem'Hadar, and then the Klingons, and finally Anon and his Cardassians, Janice Lange somewhere in the middle and inconsequential, it was the latter she could not get beyond, though she tried. For several hours. Possibly would have succeeded if she managed to stay on track, not digressing every other sentence or so into some dissertation about Dukat. Whom she hated, loathed, and knew more about than any number of officially appointed biographers, including his penchant for Bajoran Spring wine.

She was deaf to her own words. Intolerant of the Bajoran whore who birthed the child of blood, and yet with Dukat when word of the long-lost Cardassian transport _Ravinok ultimately found them together on a different distant world. Her, in search of some Resistance mentor Lorit Akrem, the former Cardassian Prefect in search of his Bajoran indiscretion Tora Ziyal. A child Kira claimed to know nothing about and yet embraced ardently, immediately, threatening Dukat with loss of his own life if he dared follow through with executing the girl, his goal behind his quest. One abandoned. The force, power, strength of Kira's argument able to guide him into a more reasonable frame of mind._

Anar attempted to assimilate a picture of Kira and Dukat embroiled in a heated debate of Ziyal's life or death on some scorched desert with Kira emerging triumphant rather than finding herself as dead as Tora Naprem and her child Ziyal with one strike of Dukat's hand.

He couldn't assimilate it, who could? He faded into heavy thinking of the Klingons. They had appeared out of nowhere, came from everywhere, like a plague of locusts swarming down. Anar fell with his executioner dead beside him. The Klingon's bat'telh pinned in his chest, the weight of it crushing, his life draining into the mud. Janice's desperate dive to pull Nadya away from her mortally wounded grandfather was momentarily successful in saving the child's throat, not her ear. She came away with the screaming child in her arms and blood on her hands. The Klingon who had swung his sword and missed was unimpressed by his lost comrade, the stumbling pleas of the Human or the crying rage of the child. His bat'telh simply came up again, in preparation of coming down. His comrade's sword caught him from behind, swung by Anar's hand, severing the Klingon's leg at the knee and he was down on his stump in the mud, struggling to right himself, gurgling and gasping for air as he drank the wet earth. Anar pressing his face deeper and deeper into the drowning pool of muck and blood until he was silent and dead. Janice sank back on her haunches, clutching Nadya in disbelief, a moment later dropping the child, the two of them scrambling to help him, determined to get to his feet, supporting himself briefly with the assistance of the Klingon's bat'telh like a crutch.

"Stay with the bodies; it's your only hope," he remembered directing Janice before he dropped to die again, or not die, obviously. The body she chose to stay with was his, stuffing his shirt into his gaping wounds and packing them tightly with mud. Soothing Nadya's sobs into whimpers, cautioning her to silence, attempting to keep the child warm beneath her as she prayed for the winter day to turn night, the cold to turn bitter, which it did. The mud like ice inside of him, staunching the flow of blood, his heart rate slowing and he could feel himself floating in a natural state of stasis.

Anar roused himself from his memory. Guilty of his own mental digression, though not without cause, reason, or point. Janice Lange could not stop a Klingon's bat'telh, their boots from trampling the bones of children. Somehow Kira Nerys managed the impossible with Dukat on a desolate world of Breen mines, whose only witnesses as to how were the sun and the sand. Convincing him instead to murder his career rather than his child, toppling Cardassia's then Chief Military Advisor from his throne and casting him into a state of political exile.

It was an amazing tale of accomplishment Anar could not believe anymore than he could explain it even if the child in question was born of Kira Nerys rather than some Tora Naprem. There was more to the escapade than Kira was wanting to tell and unwilling to say. She knew of the child Ziyal, of course she did. Traveling with Dukat to secure her before what? Truth became common knowledge?

What was the truth? Anar surveyed his nephew's liaison, former member of his Resistance group, former lover, much in the same way as the Obsidian spy Garak had once surveyed Janice. Dukat's total disregard for his political standing unexplained except as simple arrogance. His ability to secure assistance from the ranks of his one-time Bajoran mistresses unlikely as the yarn unless the mistress remained indebted somehow or believed she did. 

Kira believed she did. Her hand clutched the wineglass she drank from. Her face contorted with misery and disgust. Wanting to talk of Klingons, the Federation, Nadya's and the colony's hope and plans for the future and rambling on about Dukat, embarrassed by Janice's revelation of her relationship with Ziyal. Dukat taking perverse pleasure in inciting terror over their past association being revealed, dangling the life of some child of some sister, some mother, some friend, their own, over her head. She would have been scarcely more than a child herself if the child was hers.

The child was hers. Fourteen? Anar guessed Kira's age at the time of her daughter's birth, attempting to imagine the sequence of events. Mistress to Dukat's mistress perhaps and then what? Mistress herself? He let her talk. Little of it clear. Much of it contradictory with Janice confused with Ziyal, Anon confused with Dukat. Anger and animosity spread among Shakaar, Damar, and of course, Dukat. Her conversation continuing until they could have walked to the Ark and walked back to the town again.

"I don't know…" Kira finally said for some uncounted time, her head resting back against the wall. The wine was making her tired. The cold creeping in, numbing her stiff bones, encouraging her eyes to close. She opened them after a minute or two to look at him. Comfortable and relaxed, his head resting against the wall next to hers, watching her, smiling as he always seemed to be smiling. Kira's gaze dropped from the face to the loosened robes exposing his suntanned chest marked with a scar formed in almost a perfect circle the size of her fist. 

"Klingons," his hand touched her hair lightly, his voice agreeing softly with the story he hadn't told her and words she probably wouldn't have heard if he had."Eighteen hundred dead, 250 or so alive. The first of us died the following day of the Rigelian plague. Our numbers dwindling down to thirty-five…" he kissed her, his hand around her wrist, pressing it into the flesh of his chest.

"Yes, you can…" he assured when she stiffened in automatic and immediate resistance.

"And, of course," he agreed as her fingers dug into the roots of his hair, the heel of her boot gouging a painful scrape across his knee as she twisted herself in an effort to give him a well-placed kick, "you don't have to."


	3. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"You!" Kira was up, spitting the taste of his mouth from hers as she scoured hers clean.

"I…" Anar rose to his feet; a mistake. She stepped as if she was going to charge him, his hands immediately coming up in a gesture of surrender and peace while she screamed at him something about his nephew Shakaar, not forgetting to invoke Dukat. Her words making little sense, there was no way they could make coherent sense, tumbling over each other in her bristling rage, her arms, hands and feet thrashing and attacking the air as she stomped and kicked, emphasizing what she thought of him.

"It was a kiss?" Anar endeavored to explain at one point in her tirade.

  


"I know what it was!" Kira assured. The same as she knew he was as vile as Dukat as vile as Shakaar, neither of them anywhere near as vile as him. "He's your nephew!" she screamed again, incensed, appalled.

"Adon," Anar understood. True, Adon was. Her sense of morality somehow upset by the fact that Adon was, which, granted Anar's wasn't. It wasn't upset at all. Either meaning he had no sense of morality as she proclaimed, or simply a different sense than she, one that found him quite comfortable with daring to kiss the former lover of his nephew. An act, one would swear by her reaction equable to incest. She was irrational under her incoherent, searing chatter, close to accusing him of physical violative assault. He endeavored to bring her back to a sense of reality. "Adon is a fool."

"Fool?" Kira sputtered.

"Yes, a fool," he insisted, his impatience with the melodrama getting the better of him. "To allow someone such as Dukat to divide the two of you? When what choices you would have had are clearly none? As innocent as Janice in her struggle with Hawk. A difference in the ages, that is all. One with her throat crushed, the other with her guts torn. Forced to birth a child she was forced to conceive."

"What?" Kira said. "What?"

What. Anar sighed. Angry with himself for his impatience, annoyed with her for refusing to purge herself of the vomit choking her for twenty something years.

"You think that I…" her step forward was stiff, contained.

Think? He knew. Having seen it all in fifty-eight years and knowing it when he saw it as well. His impatience softened. His smile gentle, his words uttered to reassure. "I care little if you birthed twelve children for the beast, or only one. I am not Adon who shuns or condemns you. Or Dukat with any inclination or desire to rape or mock you. Your child as innocent as her mother. Her father your master, not your lover. Let it go, Nerys. What you cannot forgive, you must forget -- "

She let it go. Her hand slapped his face. The two of them Bajoran, their strength reasonably matched though one was male and the other female, one endeavoring to remain calm, the other engulfed in fury, the damage her hand inflicted was minimal. A slight taste of blood as his teeth bit his tongue. A light trickle as her nail scratched his lip.

She vanished into the mist before he could stop her. Anar retreated to the Town Center to dress in the warmth of modern clothes, collecting a cloak for her and his field unit so there be no question with his ability to locate her before she found herself lost on her directionless path of anger. He bumped into Elise upon his exit.

"Force, not love. Rape, and a child of blood. That is without doubt." Grateful for his daughter's vigilant sense of protection the sigh was Anar's.

"Forced to conceive, to birth, not love, which she does." The words of wisdom were Elise's.

Anar stared at her. "At age fourteen at best? Who could love a man three times one's age, and not even a man, but Dukat?"

Elise shrugged. "We are all fools at fourteen, some more so than others. I couldn't love at any age. Not the child or the man unless it was one I chose. Kira Nerys is not me. Think, is all I am saying to you.Think and walk wisely. I am not condemning some child named Kira, nor will I ever, no more than you…though are you sure…" she hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "You seek to absolve a woman of a past that is hers? One that is perhaps easier for you to accept? One of rape rather than indiscretion? I repeat, father. Forced to birth, to conceive, never love. Not some unwilling child of hers, or some child of some whore to Prefect Dukat."

"No…" Anar said. "No." Beyond the loathing he could see in Anon's eyes, the teasing he could hear in Pfrann's voice and the voices of others, Kira's fear was too great. Her terror strangling and obvious. There in her voice, her mannerisms and expression on her face. Whatever lies Dukat might spread about her, whatever truths he might tell, he could not see her acknowledging or accepting any unless within the lies was a truth she could not hide, such as a child. He eyed his daughter. "You're talking about a woman I might some day decide to make your mother."

Elise smiled before she laughed. "I know. Be sure you do heed me then, father. For if you ever pledge yourself to my mother, you pledge yourself to her, not some woman you have created to satisfy yourself."

"Who could argue against that?" Anar walked off into the mist, activating his field unit and easily locating Kira already a mile and a half away. 

_"Ah, now I could have told you that!" The mist turned wet and icy outside the town's perimeter, Dukat looming ahead of Kira in the blanketed fog, his black and silver uniform glittering white in the frosty mixture, satisfaction smearing his thin lips._

"Oh, just shut up!" she stormed past him to stop and whirl back around.

He was still there. Leering _"What?" as she stared at him. __"Something wrong?"_

"Wrong…" Kira repeated.Her mind was playing tricks on her. The wine, the cold. "Wrong?" she held him by the breast of his tunic, screaming up into his face. "Yes, there's something wrong! Did you hear what he said? Did you hear him?"

_"Yes!" Dukat pulled her hands free. "And, well, Major," he extended matter-of-factly, not at all dismayed or perturbed, "what can I say? If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.In the meantime you're right. He appears to be jealous of you and I for some reason…apart from that!" he leered again, "clearly deranged!"_

"I don't care about him!" she snapped, or for that matter anything _he might have to say. "You killed her!" she grabbed him again, twisting his tunic, her fists pounding into his chest. "You killed her, not Damar. You with your stupid nonsense…you with your stupid everything! Stupid! Stupid!" she screamed, charging him when she wasn't screaming and demanding "Why? Why?" _

She was starting to cry. Her shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she clung to him, her fingers clawing at his chest, angry, confused, sobbing as she shook her head still asking "Why?" as she slipped down off him to sit on the ground.

Anar had no idea. Stupid? Probably? As she said?He slipped the cloak off his shoulder, stooping to drape it around hers. "You'll catch your death out here…"

Her head snapped up with his touch to stare at him wildly and wild-eyed. She jumped up to push him away, whirling around to collide with him when he stepped to block her escape. "Yes, it's me," he reassured her fervent, desperate looks back at whatever or whoever she thought she was seeing. Dukat, he believed, having figured that much out. The Prophets' visions stark at times the same as they could be vague. Cold, he would have to say this time. Not as gentle as he would have preferred, or as gentle as he attempted to make his own overtures. "I cannot in good conscience allow you to freeze…"

She pushed him away, flinging the cloak on the ground and stalked off. Anar toyed with his field unit. "That is if I'm allowed."

"Will you just get!" Kira snatched the field unit from him to fling it out into the darkness when he showed up to extend it to her, citing concern over her ability and sense of direction across a region she had traveled only once.

Anar was grateful the field unit had a proximity sensor, and grateful for Elise's advice he step wisely as he almost stepped on the unit in the dark. There remained that issue of Nerys, seven miles and an hour or more until the earliest light of dawn. He opted to track her accuracy from a safe and reasonable distance, activating a holographic projection only when necessary to advise her when she strayed too far east, or too far west. She was going to kill him long before either of them could see the outline of the shuttle, morning's light just breaking overhead. His field unit told him the Trill was outside.

The light, freezing rain had stopped at some point earlier. Kira was hot from her pounding exercise, not cold with exposure, startled to find Dax rounding the corner of the Ark to greet her with a smile. "Late night."

Kira nodded, absently at first and then flustered. "I fell asleep."

"What?" Dax said.

"Asleep," Kira's hand gestured wildly. "I fell asleep."

"Oh," Dax frowned slightly and then smiled again. "That boring?"

Kira's head snapped up from unzipping her field jacket. 

"Actually I meant me," Dax offered. "Julian and I…" she trailed off momentarily. "Well, we had a rather interesting time trying to decide if the expedition should be chronicled as medical or botanical…you fell asleep?" she frowned again, realizing what Kira was saying. "With Anar?"

"Not _with Anar," Kira gestured irritably again. "But with Anar, yes, __with Anar; I fell asleep." She stalked inside._

Dax nodded. "I think I have it." She followed Kira inside where it was crowded.

"What?" Kira stepped on Bashir's foot, her head banging off his chin. "I fell asleep, all right? I fell asleep."

"Yes, well, my apologies…" Bashir began even though all he had done was attempt to exit his quarters; he paused. "What?"

"She fell asleep," Dax nodded over Kira's head.

"Asleep?" Bashir repeated. "On Anar?"

"Oh!" Kira pushed him roughly aside to bang her way to the commissary.

"I wouldn't exactly say _on Anar," Dax shook her head at Bashir's agog expression._

"The devil you wouldn't," he whistled. "No more than I wouldn't. Well, that rather lets us off the hook, doesn't it?"

"I…" Dax wasn't so sure that was the point. She turned around to smile at Anar appearing through the doorway.

"Kira?" he inquired pleasantly as if he didn't know she was there.

"Commissary," Dax obligingly pointed aft.

"Thank you," Anar stepped in to step past.

"You naughty boy," Bashir added under his breath.

Not quite far enough under his breath. Anar halted. Bashir smiled. "Well, perhaps not a boy, exactly."

"No, not exactly," Anar agreed.

"But naughty nevertheless," Bashir's mouth twisted slyly as Anar moved on.

"Yes," Dax agreed.

"I am, you mean," Bashir stopped her from following Kira. "No, wait a minute. I just wanted to say…"

"What happened to nary so much as a cross-eyed look?" she verified.

"Sideways glance, thank you very much -- And, no, what I wanted to say was simply even though I might not appear to be, I am thinking of you; fondly. Constantly. Throughout the day. I'm not withdrawing, I mean to say. Distancing myself, as I have in the past…I simply wanted you to know that," he swallowed under her scrutiny. "Understand that. Especially now. Under the circumstances…and, yes," he nodded, "perhaps I should also consider foregoing any unnecessary long winded speeches or explanations…"

"They're really not necessary," Dax left him to curiously follow Anar.

"Perhaps for you they're not," Bashir said to himself. "On the other hand I'm not quite so sure I can toss off a night of lovemaking so lightly and carry on as if nothing has happened, is changed, or new. As a matter of fact, I have a distinct impression I'm going to be frightfully awful at this whole affair business…if you care to know that…" he curiously proceeded after Dax for the commissary.

Why Kira seemed to think she had to strike and pound on everything perplexed Anar. But there she was, sharply cuffing the replicator and impatiently tapping her foot for the moment it took the cup to appear. 

"It works just as well by pressing it," he offered; she ignored him. He could hear himself sighing again. "Kira…"

"I know what you said!" her cup slammed down on the island, the dark brown and hot liquid sloshing out to stain the cuff of her uniform.

"She's always like that before she's had her raktajino." The Trill was behind him offering some clever advice of her own.

"Yes…" Anar started to say in diplomatic agreement, pausing to focus on the cup. "Raktajino…"

"Coffee," Dax clarified.

"_Klingon!" Kira reared up in his face._

Her meaning was clear. "Kira, I never said…"

"I know what you said!"

"What did he say?" Bashir's whisper tickled Dax's ear.

She shrugged. Nothing monumental or incriminating that she overheard. "I think it must have been earlier."

"They were sleeping together earlier," he reminded wickedly.

For some reason Dax wasn't too sure about that. Though neither was she too sure about anything else. She surveyed Anar. His white hair, his tanned, toned frame. He was tall, handsome, proven arrogant, if not athletically inclined. "Wishful thinking?" she surmised, truly seldom having seen Kira as angry as she was without a reason, usually a good one.

"Go on," Julian scoffed in a fair imitation of the Chief.

"Well…" Dax still wasn't necessarily convinced.

"Could we..?" Anar tactfully cleared his throat with an indicating motion and request of Kira.

"I guess they can," Dax nodded as Kira stalked past her followed closely by Anar tipping his head.

"Quite. You're excused," Bashir agreed with a smart, satisfied turn for the replicator. "Merely a lovers' spat as I said. No reason to be concerned. I had one of those myself not ten minutes ago."

Dax looked at him; he grinned. "Not in the corridor, in my quarters. And not obviously with you. Though, yes, as obviously with you, though in absentee expression, I guess you could say. I spoke for you, is what I'm saying. Argued your point for you."

"Who won?" was her sole concern.

"You did, I suspect," he imagined. "But only because I was man enough to acknowledge the only thing likely wrong with me is that I suddenly crashed. Plummeted. Emotionally I'm talking about. Likely only because I was high -- possibly a little too high," he considered briefly. "I really wouldn't know. I've never been quite that high before. Not even the time I disengaged the gravitational field…" He stalled, his grin flashing mildly sheepishly and definitely chagrined as he bent his head to sip his coffee. "Yes, well, you don't really need to know about that."

"No," Dax rather had that same idea.

"It's the old me talking anyway," he admitted. "But then it's the new me who feels distinctly out of sorts."

"We have a week," she reminded.

"Quite. And after that? A host of staggering opportunities," he recalled.

Dax wouldn't say a host exactly, but she also wouldn't say Bashir was making his point. "What's really wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Nothing's wrong quite possibly…nothing that isn't remarkably commonplace anyway. Panic? Sheer panic? Separation anxiety? Insecurity? Simply not ready for the night to end and the morning to begin…yes, I know," he smiled back at her, "I just said all of that. Now I'm saying I love you madly. Deeply. Wholly. With every part of me. I want there to be a commitment between us. For us to see this through -- us through. Follow it to wherever it's going to lead."

"Yes," she agreed.

"Jadzia…" he stepped sharply forward, pinning her back against the replicator.

"Julian…" she reminded.

"Damn what we promised for a moment, listen to me. It's not the way it was. It will never be that way again. Say you know that. Swear you know that. That you believe me. No dangling myself in front of you to snatch myself away. I'm guilty as Hell is what's wrong. Of anything you care to imagine or accuse me of, and it's all returning to haunt me."

"Julian, I love you," she assured. "In ways I can't remember ever loving anyone else."

"And I love you," his eyes closed against the sensation of her hair brushing his face. "Terrified who will end up being hurt is you. Damn it, Jadzia, one pulled muscle and I'm apt to kill him."

"I wouldn't be concerned about that."

"I meant in anger."

She knew what he meant. "And I wouldn't be concerned. Worf isn't violent."

"The devil he isn't. It's a vile analogy, but one whiff of you being in bed with me and we'll find out, won't we? Which I don't care to do."

No. Neither did she. "Possibly for a different reason?" her hand touched his cheek lightly.

"Except I can take better care of myself than you can. It's not all brute strength. Anar certainly proved that, didn't he? In his tango with Martok's bridge crew? It's skill and just plain knowledge of Klingon anatomy."

"Close enough," she accepted his paraphrase of Tracy Sorge's verdict of just what had transpired aboard Martok's Bird-of-Prey that found five Klingon warriors dead at the hands of one lone, middle-aged Bajoran Town Elder formerly of the Maquis.

Five Klingon warriors who had been simple by comparison, Anar was posed to admit. "Kira, I did not say you were Dukat's mistress…"

"Don't tell me what you said!" she seized him by the banded collar of his shirt, attempting to yank him down to her level.

"Certainly not in the manner of any form of insult," Anar maintained calmly, gently removing her hands from his tunic; she snatched them away from him. "Hardly willingly…"

She wasn't listening. "Do you know why you are so obsessed with Dukat? Do you?"

He wouldn't say he was obsessed with Dukat. The farthest from it, actually.He glanced down on the coffee she had thrown to the ground thinking about Anon's adopted battle cruiser the _Tir, its crew,Kira's familiarity and its unusually varied replicator menu that included Klingon raktajino and a limited selection of traditional Bajoran fare.It was circumstantial evidence; not even circumstantial evidence, the same as everything else and it nagged at him just the same._

"Because you're just like him!" she accused. "Exactly like him! Adon? Ha! Try Dukat!"

"Now that I take as an insult," Anar admitted.

"Good. It was meant as one." She strode several feet away from him to collect her composure.

"As would I…" Anar chanced to approach her. She spun around prepared to strike. He nodded, holding up his hands in obedient demonstration. "No hands."

"Unless you want them broken."

He believed her. "As would I not like to think my competition with Adon extends to you…Though admittedly the competition is as old, as it is entrenched. You're a beautiful woman, Kira Nerys…"

"I was twenty-six years old when I met Dukat," she was back in his face, straining to be up in his face.

"I meant…"

"I know what you meant!"

An adult, not a child. Ziyal could be her younger sister, but not her daughter; she was wrong. Wrong as far as assuming he was talking about Dukat rather than himself…as she was, remained extraordinarily focused on Dukat.For whatever reason. Anar sighed again. The reason beyond him, becoming less interesting as the seconds passed them by. "Fine. Have it your way. You were twenty-six…not fourteen?" he guessed. "Thirteen?"

"Ten!" She claimed a youth that was not hers, and that time he groaned.

"By the Prophets, Nerys, I am talking about myself, not Dukat.I care little about your age then, or now. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman to me. A woman I would like to get to know…and, yes," he agreed, "I was wrong to assume your…" he paused.

"Devotion," Kira offered.

Anar smiled. "Perhaps too strong a word. I was wrong to assume your commitment to Ziyal to be anything more than your compassion for her plight."

"It's the right word," Kira nodded. "I was devoted to Ziyal. I loved Ziyal. Treasured, cherished, admired -- cried," she swallowed, her throat burning from her outrage.

"Like any child," Anar said gently.

"Daughter!" Kira snapped. "Like a daughter, yes. Sister…whatever word you care to use!"

"Child," Anar felt to be more ambiguous. "Dukat's reputation precedes him. What else can I say? I was wrong."

"And now, your daughter…" she stepped close to him again.

"Janice, yes," he said. "I look upon Janice as my daughter."

"Is married to Dukat!"

"Which gives us something in common?" he guessed.

"Which gives you something in common with Dukat. Think about that!"

Admittedly Anar hadn't. Not quite sure if he wanted to, not quite sure why he would. "Why?"

"I don't know!" 

He laughed. "Well, if you don't know…"

"I don't," she insisted.

"What if I just concede?" he offered. "Not to being a Bajoran version of Dukat, but, yes, to being wrong, rude…presumptuous," his eyes traveled over her slender, shapely frame; beguiling and inviting, she certainly was. "Lastly to being a member of the opposite sex in the captivating company of such a lovely member of the opposite sex to me?"

She didn't laugh back, but that was all right. Anar had a feeling he was on his way to being forgiven."To the opposite, what I didn't do in any way was insinuate, promote, or presume you to be the mistress of Chancellor Gowron."

She had no idea what he meant. "The raktajino?" he prompted. "You said Klingon as if I had."

"You said raktajino as if it were poison for voles," she returned coldly.

Voles. Cardassian voles, no doubt. As yes, no doubt, to a Cardassian it would be shunned as such. She insisted on tempting his suspicions. He was beginning to wonder if she was doing it intentionally. "Dinner?" he hoped.

"The grotto," she said.

"The grotto it is," he conceded.

"And from there dinner," Bashir advised Dax where they lounged in the hatchway eavesdropping. "Damn six-hour stroll one way we'd better get something for our trouble; and I do mean we, not just Kira."

"Will you stop?" she requested.

"Me stop? Anar's the one who should stop. For God's sake simply because Kira had a friendship with Ziyal does that have to put her in bed with Dukat? Is he mad?"

"Bajoran," Dax quite accurately suspected. One who had seen much, if not too much in fifty-eight years. "That," she smiled, "and I think he's rather attracted to her."

"So he accuses her of sleeping with Dukat?" Bashir missed the correlation.

"You have a point," she agreed.

"Thank you. Of course, by the same token you and I are sleeping together and so if anyone were to accuse us, they would be right…not that I mean to suggest," he grinned, "there's any connection, or for that matter, even relative."

"Oh, good. Because quite frankly I missed that correlation."

"Not the only thing you're going to miss," he threatened. "I repeat, a six-hour stroll one way is just that; six hours, one way. Not including some preliminary field study. Not including a six-hour stroll back. What does that suggest to you?"

She pondered the question. "Blisters?"

"Not exactly," he cracked a sly and somewhat tawdry alternative in her ear. "True or false?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Well, perhaps not personally. But I do insist…" he ogled Kira approaching, "it is a legitimate medical condition."

"What is?" Kira asked.

"Starvation," Bashir assured. "Short for is there a particular reason why you get to feast on an expansive variety of culinary delights while Dax and I have to sustain ourselves on field rations, at best a replicator?"

"Rank."

"Short for I think it's time to get packing," Dax nodded.

"Quite." Bashir's interpretation as well. "And, well, I must say I'm certainly looking forward to this…"

"Or not." He posed on the banks of what was hardly a grotto, more a primal swamp.

"The grotto's on the other side," Dax encouraged his pioneer spirit.

"Twelve thousand square," Kira added to his elation.

"Kilometers I take you to mean," Bashir agreed. "Is there a particular reason you felt the need to drown your dead a half day's walk from home?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sisko's Bashir knew the answer to his caustic dig masked as humor without the Trill having to bring it to his attention. An unlikely find in the foothills of a range of abandoned Cardassian mines, the grotto was picturesque in her primitive, unkempt state. Tranquil. Timeless, or time-forgotten. Within twenty meters her shores graduating into smooth grassy mounds high above the banks of the river's inlet she embraced. Unfamiliar with the geography they hadn't realized come the torrential rains of the late seasons the river with no place to go quickly rose, overflowing its banks, transforming much of the region into a muddy pool of quagmire.

Bashir also knew beset by a quickly advancing infectious plague it seemed the best idea to continue transporting the dead to an area far, yet still reasonable, from the township in an effort to protect those struggling to survive, despite the risk of the graves flooding.

  


Sisko's Bashir knew all of that, appearing to enjoy jolting his audience with his biting ridicule or sarcasm, or be oblivious to them altogether.Whichever, the doctor's sneers and sly comments eventually dissolved into focused silence. Engrossed in the randomly selective field study. Frustrated by the governing rule of no scans of the area, and having to rely on his intelligence and the Trill's background in exobiology rather than the assortment of auxiliary attachments for his tricorder. His interest piqued by the challenge. His field uniform, face and hands shortly as filthy as everyone else's.

The Trill was simply interested.Kira's concentration split between obediently logging the samples collected and thinking about the honeycomb of mines watching them. 

"Exobiology," Anar mentioned at one point to Dax as she chanced sinking knee-deep in the mud to obtain a water sample offshore. "You suspect some alien lifeform to be responsible for the cream's properties."

"I know it's possible," she said.

"Cleansing properties, anyway," Bashir interjected, treading through the silt to join them. "Like a maggot stripping spoiled flesh…who cares whose flesh? Certainly not fussy insofar as whose, simply infinitesimal…what?" he grinned at Dax looking down her premier distinctions at him. "I'm agreeing with you. Definitely the most plausible explanation, and probably right."

"I don't think that's it," she shook her head.

Five minutes later they were both back on the banks, Dax's boots promptly consuming her socks with a gleeful, sucking sound when she pried them off to scoop out the mud by the handful.

"They're warm," she assured Bashir laughing.

"Whose? Mine? Certainly are," he nevertheless sat down to tug off his boots, feeling sorry for her and willing to share.

"No, I don't want your socks."

"What about one of them?"

One of them? Now, what was she going to do with one of them? Bashir didn't know. Same thing he was, he supposed.

"Funny," Dax had to say as he dangled his insulated footwear temptingly in front of her, "but you don't look the jealous type."

"Of Anar?" That brought a broad smile to Bashir's face. "Hardly. Besides, we've already decided if he's interested, he's interested in Kira."

"I'm sure he's been interested in others," Dax decided to take his socks and use hers to finish cleaning out her boots.

"Certain he has," Bashir pulled a fresh pair of thermal hose out of the pocket of his jacket to dress his feet, snuggling them back warm inside his boots. "Can't see to where that amounts to my being jealous -- I'm not jealous," he laughed at Dax looking at him. "Where do you get this idea that I'm jealous of Anar, of all people?"

"I don't think that's it," she shook her head again.

"Oh," Bashir said, wondering curiously, "well, what is 'it' then, if I may ask?"

Dax stared at his boots, from them to him. Unable to believe he did what he just did, while at the same time believing he did what he just did. "And here I was going to ask are you sure you'll be comfortable?"

"What?" he said. "Oh, yes, quite. You?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Good," he rose with an offer to give her a hand up. "After all, can't very well be walking around without socks in our boots, neither of us…On the other hand," he agreed, attempting to wipe his trousers off, dust was certainly out of the question, "what I don't have with me is a spare pair of trousers. I guess we're just going to have to make do."

Dax laughed. "You're jealous."

"Fiercely," Bashir grinned. "To be expected, isn't it? You needed as much help collecting that water sample, like I need help collecting my water samples. If he wants to help someone, let him help Kira."

Anar turned away from Bashir and Dax with a better understanding of what the conversation in the _Defiant's shuttle bay may have been about, and why the Klingon Worf may have found himself mentioned in the discussion. _

"I would think there are probably thousands of us here," he looked back from observing the framework of mountains with a smile for Kira.

She ignored the attempt at conversation, morbid though it might be; clipping the field pack closed with a snap. "Any lifeform would have devoured the mummy."

"Point." Bashir and his opinions were back. "Any should have."

"You'll get your chance to examine Dolores, Doctor," Anar's eyes came down from the skies and praying for temperance and patience. 

"When?" 

The last of the limited sunlight faded on them quickly requiring they abort the field study until the next day. It made more sense to return to the shuttle where they could freely begin any analysis they wished rather than linger in the discomfort of the dark and the cold eighteen hours waiting for the new dawn. Anar managed to convince Kira to give dinner and conversation a second chance; it wasn't difficult to do. She wanted to know what they expected of the Federation and/or Shakaar, and what the UFP and Bajor Prime could expect in return.

Dax decided she was interested in learning the geography and placing her position. That was somewhat more difficult, particularly without a tricorder to guide her. The mountains vanished against the black, starlit background, the terrain again flat and absent of landmarks in the dark. In spite of herself she couldn't help returning to Julian's accusations of deliberate. Everything was deliberate. From what they could scan, to what they couldn't.

From what they could see, to what they couldn't. Perhaps. To assist in obtaining Kira's hesitant agreement to return to the township for a frank discussion on the colony's future Anar committed to Julian examining Lange's mummy come the morrow. Julian was apparently thinking of other things, Anar's concession failing to impress him.

It was a four-hour hike across the endless flat plains from the grotto to the town square, from there the familiar three hours more to the shuttle. Tired of being cold and wet Julian was interested only in continuing. That was fine with Dax. She remained interested in learning her surroundings. The detour for the colony lengthening their return trip by only an hour, the three sites were actually in reasonable proximity to each other, possibly drawn in a rough circle. She studied the position and patterns of the planet's strung wave of crescent moons and visible terrestrial bodies. It was a fair presumption that Anon's downed transport was somewhere within its own reasonable distance from the township, unless the rule of no transporting did not apply to Cardassians.

She wasn't quite sure what did apply to Cardassians other than freedom and friendship. Something she continued to find most interesting of all. Kira's teeth had to be on edge. Anar's personal interest only serving to further aggravate her.

She smiled at Bashir striding along at her side. "What happened to the least we can expect is dinner?"

He smiled, somewhere between shy and slyly before he stopped to slip his arms around her and kiss her. "The truth is I'm not entirely inept when it comes to a replicator."

"The truth is neither am I."

They resumed walking, his arm in place across her shoulders. "What do you think is really out there that they don't want our scans to pick up?"

"Other than Bajorans with DNA inhibitors?"

Bashir laughed with a granting nod for his arm. "If there are it's too late. Our secret's out. I wonder if they care any more than I do about what they know really?"

"I don't know. How much do you care?"

"Fairly little," Bashir admitted. "Rather the same as I do about Dukat's transport -- which is probably what is out there. Along with any variety of Klingon Birds-of-Prey and so-named Maquis raiders buried along with their pilots; that much of Anar's claim I do believe. Interesting they think we would care."

Dax shrugged."Perhaps they think we're obligated."

"Not in the least. I have all I can do to maintain any level of interest in this 'study' whatsoever…other than the child…or you. Come on…" He unfastened his field jacket stiff with mud when they boarded the shuttle to drop it on the floor, pulling her toward the shower where they scraped and rinsed the river's grotto from their skin and made love.

For the first and last time Bashir swore as they collapsed against the wall satisfied and exhausted from the intensity of their union and oppressive heat, his fingers gripping the nape of her neck. The ends of his drying hair wet, his shoulders and neck slippery with sweat, his chest feeling saturated as she relaxed against him.

"Feeling better?" Dax asked. Bashir laughed, she did also. "You know what I meant."

"Quite. I do, as I do," he toyed with her hair. "Better even tomorrow. Rather suspect any lingering insecurity will be gone by mid-week to return at the end. Add to that an occasional feeling of anger and resentment that there's even a Mister Worf to have to take into consideration."

His honesty was stark, not brutal. Dax appreciated that. She simply disagreed, pleasantly. "Worf is noble, Julian. As innocent as I am if you're right about Curzon abusing his position."

"In your opinion. In mine he's a savage. An enabler at best. It's possible the truth will be found somewhere in the middle. What isn't available for dispute is I am right about Curzon attempting to control Dax and you rather than assist. We'll explore all of it, everything. As far as everything else, just try to bear with me is all I can ask. That first night alone is bound to be the worst of it. Can only get better from there; us get better from there. Stronger. Other than that it's a great deal of fun, actually -- _all of it's fun," he clarified with another laugh as she laughed again as well. "Everything. I enjoy working with you. Always have. The fact that we're lovers is only an improvement on an already perfect professional relationship."_

They actually did get some work done. Quite a bit of it. Admittedly some of it in the cabin where they could be comfortable and relaxed in the closeness of each other's arms as they worked at compiling their data. Bashir matching wits with the shuttle's limited medical bank determined to design a relatively risk-free program of therapies for Nadya,Dax concentrating on following the assortment of organizational breakdowns of their field samples.The Ark's temperature controls consistent in being erratic, blasting them with zero cold for an hour or two and broiling them for the next. At some point before they lifted off Kira was going to have to suspend her diplomatic efforts and resume her role of engineer. She suspended them for the evening around 2600 extended time. Loudly as the morning before. Her boarding announced with a crash.

"Kira," Dax tentatively identified who or what was responsible for the sound of something falling over or being thrown.

Bashir's reply was an absent "Yes…" his attention absorbed by his tricorder and Nadya's chromosomes as he sat, reclined against the supporting wall of the bunk with his knees bent, his arms wrapped around her propped against him.

"I think I'll just make sure," Dax crawled out from under his arms to tuck in her T-shirt and find her boots.

"Probably should…" Bashir agreed disinterested, eventually joining her outside the cargo hold.

It wasn't Kira. One of the field packs of samples was on the floor of the cargo hold, fallen from its perch atop the console. They had opened the hatch over an hour ago for some much needed air circulation when the shuttle's thermostat threatened to approach inferno and the light wind had picked up a little Dax supposed. However even a sudden, stiff gust couldn't explain the weighted pack being the only item to find itself pushed several inches to the edge before it toppled. She collected a tricorder and stepped outside to break a rule or two.

"You'll catch your death out here." Julian's hands ran briskly over her bare arms, borrowing her tricorder to have a look with the reminder, "DNA inhibitors."

"Convenient," Dax agreed.

"And largely inactivated, oddly enough," Bashir nodded. "I read a community of approximately thirty Bajorans roughly ten miles southwest. If there's anyone else awake and moving around out here apart from us they're invisible or dead. If you care to wait a moment I'll get my medical tricorder and confirm which."

"There should be thirty-six," Dax took her tricorder back.

"Counting Kira," Bashir grinned. "You're forgetting about the holographic matrix. Thirty Bajorans could be a stock projection for whatever reason, arbitrary, even, cloaking their one time impressive number of 2,000. Ironic that arbitrary would turn out to be remarkably close to accurate."

Dax wasn't forgetting anything, only the rules.

"Fair enough." His kiss brushed her throat, his arms treading their way around her. "If they can break them, so can we."

"You're suddenly wide awake," she laughed.

"And cold," he assured. "Though I insist residuals of tachyon in the area would confirm activity in the sector rather than desolation. The same as the Klingons were hardly here for no reason, no more than Dukat."

"Border patrol."

"In a transport?"

"Well, perhaps not Dukat."

"No. Dukat can be explained as salvaging what he could from an abandoned outpost -- top secret outpost, no doubt. Rumored to exist though unconfirmed. From there everything else can be explained. From Jem'Hadar to Maquis to Klingons to Anar being no better than Shakaar Adon for all his high and mighty attitude, not surpassing holier than thou. One dangling Janice's proposed discovery to get what he wants, the other doing precisely the same."

"I think there's probably a difference," Dax nodded.

"Oh? What's the difference?"

"Motivation," she teased. "Which, speaking of?"

Bashir's smile was sly. "Well, I would have to say my motivations are distinctly clear, if not obvious…if not sound."

"Sound?" she said.

"Quite," he pointed out the evidence provided by her tricorder. "Who doesn't have a DNA inhibitor is Kira, placing her ten miles and three hours from us, apparently in no more of a hurry to return than yesterday despite her excuses, claims, and tirade to the contrary."

"It does look that way, doesn't it?"

"Rather the same as it's damn cold out here," Bashir urged her back to the shuttle.

"What about our visitor?"

"If there's a visitor. I doubt it. As a matter of fact I distinctly recall just dropping everything wherever, other things on my mind. Why? Surely you're not suggesting we post watch?"

"Well…" Dax said.

"Better idea," he kissed her. "Curiosity or sabotage they can have whatever they want, take whatever they want, including the Ark. Gut the thing for all I care, burying its duranium carcass alongside the rest of them."

"Which we just may wake up to find we have been," she laughed.

"Nonsense. I'm telling you it's my fault. I probably set it on the edge -- "

"Probably?"

"Well, obviously, yes, if the damn thing fell over…"

The hatch closed, Ziyal turning her solemn, stern Cardassian face on Nadya lying disgusted and impatient beside the shuttle's landing gear, her elbows propped up in the mud, her chin resting in her hands.

"He kissed her," Nadya offered as the explanation behind why she could be found ten miles from home under the Federation shuttle in the middle of the frigid night. It wasn't a very good reason, one Ziyal did not accept.

"Okay…" Nadya crawled out from her hiding place to take her friend's smooth gray hand."But he still kissed her. Why? She's a Klingon's mate. I know. Janice told me. Who would kiss a Klingon's mate? Other than the Federation," she decided for herself with a sneer. "They like Klingons; they would."

"And what did you say that had to do with taking Commander Dax's field samples?" Ziyal verified.

Nadya grinned. "I would have if you hadn't surprised me. The grotto is Dolores's home. I promised Janice I'd protect it."

"They'll only go back for more," Ziyal proposed wisely.

"Why? They don't even believe in Janice's cream."

"Oh, I think they do. But they also know enough to know it's an extensive project, and maybe they're just not sure where to begin."

Nadya wasn't sure she wanted them to figure it out. "Are we going to become a Federation colony?" she groaned.

"No," Ziyal laughed. "A science community, yes, probably for a while. After that? Who knows," she smiled at the child. "Home to some of the finest Bajoran wine in the galaxy. Anything's possible."

So Nadya had been told throughout her young life. In the meantime her needs and wants were much simpler right now than trying to understand the confusing cesspool of politics, conflict, and war. She bit her lip, her feet beginning to drag, her hand unconsciously tightening inside of Ziyal's supporting grasp.

"Are you cold?" Ziyal asked.

"No," Nadya shook her head.

"Tired?"

"No."

"Then what is it?" Ziyal knelt down to hold the child crying in the cool flesh of her heavy broad breast.

"I would be happy just to have Janice come back," Nadya gasped out her pain. "Anon and Pfrann, too. I'm never going to see her again. Janice only told me I was because she knew I would be upset."

"Oh, but you are going to see her," Ziyal promised. "Much sooner than you might even think. Never is only that Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir would never harm Dolores' grotto, or Dolores herself. Nor will Keiko O'Brien. You'll see."

"Who?" Nadya said.

"Keiko O'Brien," Ziyal smiled. "Chief O'Brien's wife. They have a daughter Molly only a year or two younger than you. A little boy as well. A little brother, just like you do."

"So?" Nadya said.

"So…" Ziyal teased her with something Janice had once said about Cardassians. "Everyone likes to be liked. Even Humans."

Nadya thought about that. She thought about it long and hard. "Why? They don't like me. I heard them. They called me a monster and a mutant. You can't know how that feels…or can you?" her finger traced the Bajoran ridges on the bridge of Ziyal's thick Cardassian nose. "Child of blood you're cursed, everyone knows that. Your mother's guts torn. If you're not a mutant what are you?"

"Unique. Just like you. And simply because you think they don't like you, is that a reason you can't like them?"

"I don't like them," Nadya assured.

"Pick one to like," Ziyal encouraged. "Kira doesn't count…no, that's cheating," she shook her head. "Kira's Bajoran. Pick one of the Federation to like…and, no, it can't be Keiko O'Brien either," she shook her head again. "You haven't met Keiko. It has to be either Commander Dax or Doctor Bashir."

"Commander Dax," Nadya supposed.

"The Klingon's mate?" Ziyal blinked her watery eyes in mock surprise.

Nadya shrugged. "She's a girl."

"A pretty one, too," Ziyal took her hand as they started walking again. "Though you should know Commander Dax really isn't a girl. She's a transandrogen. Do you know what that is?"

"Someone who's neither."

"Became neither," Ziyal nodded, "in the instance of Commander Dax.That was her choice when she chose to be joined with the symbiont Dax."

"She chose to be a mutant?" Nadya eyed her.

"Unique," Ziyal smiled. "Just like you and I."

"I like being unique," Nadya admitted.

"So do I," Ziyal assured.

"And if I ruined Commander Dax's samples," Nadya advised her, "I wouldn't be too upset. They really weren't very good ones."

"Well…" Ziyal said. "Perhaps instead of playing tricks you can tell her how to collect better ones?"

"I'll think about it," Nadya broke into a hopping skip to warm her chilled feet.

"I thought you weren't cold?" Ziyal chastised.

"I'm not."

"Nor tired."

"No."

"Come here," Ziyal picked her up in her strong arms. "We don't need any more nine year olds, we have more than we can count. You need to grow old and strong. An example of endurance and delivery, not a portrait of senseless tragedy…" The child was asleep before she took twenty steps. She sang her a Bajoran lullaby for the two hours she carried her before she turned her over into the arms of the one who could see her and the three who could not. 

  


CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a frantic thirty minutes once realizing the child was missing, not in the Temple as Elise anticipated when she returned from silent participation in the town's spontaneous forum with Kira Nerys to find her infant son crying in his wraps wet for hours.

"Sian!" her panicked call for her husband and Anar interrupted over Anar's communicator, aborting the discussion of the colony's future. The pit her fear, the dark and cold and Nadya's frail condition her daughter's enemy, the grotto on her mind. Twelve of them left for the grotto armed with torches, aided by the string of crescent moons and starlight. Sian descended into the pit with four others, desperate not to find his child. Elise hovered beside Anar at the console in Janice's laboratory. Petting and cradling her son now innocently asleep, unaware of his sister's absence as his mother and grandfather impatiently watched the short range scans jerk across the display.The youngest woman of the village, twenty-six to her twenty-seven, the one she called the tramp, pregnant herself with a third man's child she announced just this evening at the meeting, citing concern for this one's well-being and pain for the past two killed in the Klingon attack, posed alert next to her, ready to console or assist.

"Nadya," Elise pointed before Anar spoke his words, the scans locating her daughter alive and on the path home from the Federation shuttlecraft.

"She's with Ziyal," Anar recognized the energy readings of the Cardassian child's soul.

She was alive was all Elise cared. She fled to collect her daughter, leaving her son safe in the comforting arms of the tramp.

"Call them to return from the grotto and out from the pit," Anar instructed the child of his village he simply called child, not tramp. Honoring her as she honored them and would with the birth of her child five months from then. 

"Anything?" Kira greeted him exiting the Town Center behind Elise's slipping footprints in the mud.

"Yes, we have her. Three kilometers…" he glanced at the tricorder in Kira's hand.

"Three kilometers?" Kira accused.

"Yes," Anar politely reached for the tricorder. "We appreciate the assistance, but we really do prefer…"

"Don't tell me what you prefer," she slapped his hand away, "when you have a child missing three kilometers from home!"

"In the middle of the night," Anar agreed. "That no one knows about for hours …You have to understand Nadya…"

Kira stalked off, tracking Elise. Anar nodded. "No, that's wrong. You don't have to understand anything."

He caught up with her in a running race that was beginning to become reminiscent of the one the evening before, one, this evening, for which he really did not have the time. His words were polite though firm. "The tricorder is out of the question. A violation of your Prime Directive, if you persist."

She was silent, staring at the Cardassian field unit he carried.

"Out of the question," Anar simply repeated, regardless. "Though you are welcome to attend, welcome to stay. Bashir and Commander Dax will be here in the morning anyway. It makes no sense to return to the shuttle at this time tonight, I am certain Nadya is fine. Any vigil we post will have to do with Nadya's past difficulties with unsettling dreams." 

She slapped the tricorder into his hand and walked off, following the general path Elise had taken, he moved to stop her but Sian was behind him, grabbing for his arm and news of Nadya. "She is with Ziyal," Anar reassured.

Sian's face whitened, not understanding him at first and thinking of his daughter as dead. "What does that mean?"

"No harm, certainly. Only that I can't guarantee what you will …or will not see…" he glanced in the direction Kira had taken and his son was now running the same as he.

They saw nothing. Only Nadya on her feet, rubbing sleep from her eyes three miles from home. Sian reached her moments ahead of Elise to whisk her into his arms. That was good. It was time his son exerted himself. Reestablished his position with his daughter stagnated since the trauma of the Klingon attack and Nadya's witness to her grandfather's near death. Time Nadya began remembering her father whom she loved as he loved her, as they all did. Anar stroked his granddaughter's head as her mother clung to her and her father gripped her to his heart.

"He kissed her," the child explained her actions to the three of them, fortunately for Bashir and the Trill Dax, Kira not a member of her close-knit audience. "The Federation kissed the Klingon's mate. I wanted to know why, and what they were doing with Dolores' grotto. Ziyal told me if I had questions about kisses I should ask you. But that the work they were doing was important to Janice and I should help Commander Dax collect better samples tomorrow."

"Ziyal…" Elise stared into the blackness for the soul that remained invisible to her. "Here with you, child, now?"

"She can't see her," Nadya agreed, less perplexed by her mother's blind eyes than those of Kira Nerys.

Her daughter was perplexed. Elise's gaze turned from where the Cardassian child either stood, or stood no longer, for Anar standing there without explanation as to how a mother could be that blind. She reserved any comment on the phenomenon for later.

"Soon perhaps," Sian reassured Nadya, "the same as all of us; Ziyal is right though, you say nothing of kisses to anyone."

"No, no one," Elise concurred. "Nor of Ziyal to Kira."

"We come of our own accord," Nadya nodded to Anar.

"So we do," he smiled.

They moved on ahead toward home, he stopped at Kira lagging in the background of the family reunion. "Do you want Bashir?" was her natural question.

"Actually," Anar admitted as they also began walking the miles for the town, "Nadya just came from the shuttle -- I would suspect Doctor Bashir and Commander Dax are unaware. She was curious about the field studies and not satisfied with the samples collected…Wouldn't you be curious?" he smiled at her irritation. "Weren't you curious? More independent than one might think appropriate for your age?"

"The Cardassians maybe," Kira assured.

"We only stopped fighting Cardassians eighteen months ago," Anar reminded. "The Federation. Klingons…a week or so," his humor returned to stay along with his desire to entice and intrigue her the way she intrigued him. "And actually, the only fight that stopped was the physical one, not the one of principle, and never will. Nadya was just verifying the principles that govern the study to her satisfaction. The Federation as old an enemy to her in her short life as the Cardassians are to you and I."

"Why nightmares?" Kira asked. "I mean other than…" she waved when he looked at her.

"Klingons?" he said. "No reason other than Klingons and her witness to what she thought was my death. You'll find the bat'telh a perfect fit," he agreed when she stared at his chest remembering the scarred circles of flesh.

"I'll take your word for it," she declined any need for personal investigation.

_"How disappointing." He swayed on his heels like Dukat, his head bent close to her, his voice low and whispering, and couldn't have known how alike her return look was to the one she would normally give the defiler. "Here I was hoping you would at least be interested in listening to my story. Nadya is extremely close to Janice, as she has always been extremely close to me. Janice is gone. If I interpret her absence as a deep loss, I cannot fathom how it must feel to one of Nadya's age, other than like a death. The fact the dead did not die is of little comfort in the middle of the night."_

"Stay where?" Kira did feel the need to verify that much.

He was biting his smile along the inside of his mouth. "Do you know I can't remember the last time I had to pursue a woman, or when I even may have wanted to?"

"Oh, well," Kira said.

"Yes," he agreed. "You may stay in the Town Center, any mat or cot of your choosing. You'll find several as long as you don't mind they have seen their share of ill, dead, and Cardassians wounded or just resting. I'll be with my family, and swear I will call if I find Bashir's attendance preferred now, rather than later."

Nadya had her own ideas about now versus later. She lay down on the mat next to her tiny brother to apologize for her neglect and kiss his sleeping head. "I think we should call the Federation to come now. The light is limited; we want to have enough time. If I'm in attendance Kira can come with Commander Dax and I to the grotto, and Anar can stay to help Doctor Bashir in case he has any questions about Dolores."

"Perhaps in a few hours," Elise agreed. "You'll have ample light and ample time, don't be concerned. Sleep, daughter, sleep."

She slept well for the next few hours. Better than her elders posting their vigil, unnecessary other than to relieve their own concerns. The entrance of the soul Ziyal into the child's troubled life was ironic in that its timing was so perfectly Cardassian and divine at the same time. Surrogate. Pacifier. Guardian, friend. Elise did not dispute the soul walking among them, Ziyal's purpose, or her intent. A simple statement she offered Anar for his contemplation regarding the unenlightened eyes of Kira Nerys. "I would see my daughter if she were the whore her mother was."

"Presuming she was daughter, presuming Ziyal was there…She was there," he acknowledged before Elise had to ask. Lagging in the background as Kira had lagged, sad longing of separation in her gaze watching Kira, a smile on her face for the distraught family now relieved. "They were close, as they are close. I admit no explanation as to why…other than possibly compassion in Kira's heart," he smiled at Elise. "Not only rage and fight; a mother's heart. Similar to yours, surpassing mine. Though I agree, I would know my son, never having seen him, or aware of his existence; I would know my son, as I did…It's the mate I remain uncertain about," he concluded wryly. "Though the attraction is definitely there."

"You're hopeless," Elise's hand cracked his arm and went to brew him some breakfast tea. "Only you would see mates among the Prophets' chosen…Janice and Anon are different," she insisted arbitrarily to him following her with questions poised on his lips. "The seed you seek to plant is planted. Its vine of Shakaar and Dukat and is done. Anon of his father,Janice as much of you as Nadya is of me."

"What about Bashir and the Trill Dax?"

She was thinking of them. Irking her background of a conservative sect their indiscretion was of little interest to her. The convenience of their presence, their potential for usefulness, perhaps mildly interesting she had to admit."Nadya is Janice's shadow as much as she is yours. I know less than either of you of Janice's experiments, though I know the grotto and the graves you dug, including the one that was to be mine. The Trill is as strong as any of us. She can share the burden of her samples and my child's weight should Nadya grow tired on her trek."

"The Trill is twice the strength of any of us," Anar assured, "to survive her choice of a Klingon for her mate."

Elise shrugged. "Perhaps something Bashir would find interesting, not me. You and Sian can share the burden of my son, carrying his weight wherever you go, ensuring his wraps remain clean. Nadya and I, we leave for the grotto with Kira and the Trill as soon as the Federation arrives…I agree with my child," she said to him looking at her, "you should call them now to leave, if they haven't left. The light will be here in two hours."

They were there with the light.

The morning brighter than the two before her, fewer clouds in the azure-blue sky, the hills in the distance remained shrouded in a heavy, milky mist. Kira was solemn and preoccupied waiting for them in the town square,Dax beginning to wonder if Anar truly was as difficult to deal with as she intimated why she just didn't put him in his place. Call time-out and take a break instead of spending every waking moment with him and all others, contrary to Benjamin's orders of spending every waking moment with her and Julian, and all others.

Julian gave every indication of thinking something else, quickly making himself scarce with the hasty invitation, "Stop by when you have a chance" upon first sight of the look on Kira's face that, in his mind, could only spell disaster. He fled for the sanctuary of the Town Center and Lange's laboratory where he could pretend to be interested in examining the mummy as much as he pretended to be interested in everything else, excluding the child, including her?

Dax had to bite her tongue. It was the first time she felt any nervousness about her decision to become involved with Julian. Uncertain if the doubts inspired annoyance or simply a resigned "I should have known" over his quick about-face before being confronted by Kira, if they were even about to be confronted by Kira. Elise was on her way out of the Town Center with Nadya, Julian stopping her with the equally hasty request "I'd like to talk with you and Sian. "

"Tell the Trill and Kira we'll be right there," Elise pushed Nadya on to haughtily eye Bashir, daring him to accuse or chastise her child. "What about?"

Bashir's tone was curt, hardly thinking of midnight visits, but instead the child's poor health that had to change. "You know very well what about. I believe we'll just stop the nonsense now and get down to deciding what's best for Nadya."

"Therapies," Elise assured as coldly. "You talk to Anar. Anything he doesn't like he'll tell you. Anything Sian and I don't like, we'll tell him. That's the order of things, Federation."

"Chain of command," Bashir agreed. "Sorry, but I keep forgetting where I am and who I'm dealing with."He left her there on the steps while he made his way into the Town Center, through the maze of connecting corridors to Janice's laboratory and the mummy to begin his analyses before someone told him he had to stop.

"What's the matter with him?" even Kira noticed something as Bashir vanished.

"Well…" having difficulty extending Julian the benefit of the doubt, Dax nevertheless also decided to play it as safe as she could. "Not to accuse anyone, but Julian and I are pretty certain we had a visitor last night…"

"Nadya," Kira was already nodding.

Nadya? That wasn't who came to Dax's mind. Nor whose feet fit the footprints she noticed when they were about to leave despite the dark, but then she had taken the time and made the effort to notice them.

"Unless she was wearing her father's boots," she offered Kira's quizzical expression. "You're right. Who says those footprints couldn't have been there before and I didn't notice them until I looked."

Kira knew she was right. "Her father was here; I was with them." 

"As we could have had any number of visitors within the last two days," Dax agreed. "I said you were right."

"I know I'm right!"

"Maybe it's me," Dax admitted at that point.

"No, it's not you," Kira was not in an agreeable mood no matter what. "It's everything; this place; everything."

Clandestine love affairs hardly weighing on her mind, what did prey was a prevailing sense of déjà vu in a town on a world where she had never been before in her life, with a man who persisted in reminding her of Dukat. She was beginning to think intentionally, never mind what Anar thought about her. If anything seemed out of place it wasn't the cold, the dark, the confusing spiral of corridors haunted with death, it was the mines in the distance and the eight moons overhead. She looked down on Nadya joining them and asking eagerly, "Did I ruin your samples?"

"Were you trying to?" Dax responded with a friendly laugh.

"I didn't understand what you wanted," Nadya shrugged. "It's all right, I do now."

So did Dax even before Elise walked up to them with a field pack slung over her shoulder. "The grotto…" she said. "Oh, but…"

"You can't have Dolores' mud," the child explained, "it's under water this time of year; this high," she held her hand chest level. "I know. Janice got stuck and I had to run and get Anar to help us."

The anecdote from Lange's life and career did not surprise her. Dax smiled. "Maybe even a little deeper than that this year. Don't misunderstand me, we appreciate your wanting to help…"

"Then accept it," Elise was there. "Anar tells us you have the strength of your mate. What's a little mud to a Klingon? If it's the coldness of the water that concerns you, it doesn't concern me."

Dax believed that; she still smiled. "Not really. No more than I'm concerned about leaving Doctor Bashir unattended while Kira and I return to the grotto regardless of who may or may not have been visiting the shuttle last night or any other time; it wasn't only Nadya. There was an adult with her -- "

"You saw us?" the child gasped startled, quieted immediately from saying anything else by her mother's hand pressing on her shoulder.

"Your footprints, anyway," Dax agreed with a nod for Kira. "Julian and I already settled the argument between us earlier over who does what and who goes where, including you; Julian won. But then he's right. We're here for a reason, as I'm sure we were asked to be here for a reason." 

"So let's go," Kira said impatiently.

Dax sighed. "So much for Benjamin's orders and my being the one with the strength of Worf…Sorry," she admitted, "but I have to say, unconcerned, I'm not exactly comfortable with leaving Julian anywhere without one of us there?"

Kira snorted. "He'll be fine."

"Oh, I know," Dax was looking at Elise. "I know."

The woman's shadowed eyes slid away from hers to inspect Kira. "You were there. My child was alone."

"She was alone," Kira nodded. "Could we just..?"

Dax supposed they could. "But as far as you…" Dax smiled at Nadya.

"You don't like me. I knew you wouldn't no matter what I did."

"What an odd thing for you to say," Dax studied the stubborn clench of the child's jaw. "Of course we like you. Doctor Bashir simply also wants to help…"

"The little mutant," Nadya agreed.

She really didn't have to say that. Dax could already hear Julian's words. There was an explanation for them, certainly no excuse. Frustration? Anger? That and neither of them knew the child was there. She crouched down, short of taking the child's hand in hers. "If I apologize for Julian's insensitivity, will you accept that he truly does want to help you? That if he's angry, he's hardly angry with you, or anyone here? More with those who aren't here any longer, the Klingons? Anything and everything else that has happened, especially to you? And he very well can't help you, can he? Not today if you and your mother come with Kira and I to the grotto?"

"Maybe even this high," the child's hand reached as high as her head in demonstration of the water level. "She was so coarse and gray we thought she was Cardassian at first."

Until they saw her face. This one's face looked like her mother's probably. There was a resemblance to Elise, a slight one to Anar, a greater one to his son Sian. To the family's true black sheep? Her uncle Hawk? With his large skull and vacant eyes that Dax recalled? The resemblance was there. Created and accentuated by the nakedness of her face, clean of eyebrows and lashes beneath her balding head of thin brown hair.

"You're right," Dax finally replied. "It can't wait a day? Even though it really is a little bit more complicated than that." She stood up. "We're only here a few more days, and Julian does want to make sure you're at least all right." When they left. Until whatever new horror saw its way to befalling her. She could also hear those words. Julian maddened to the point that he couldn't get any angrier, or so he had said.

"If he needs a day, we'll extend it a day," Kira was saying while Dax toyed with the idea of activating her com badge and notifying Julian his patient would be unavailable, or leaving him to find out for himself.

"Actually," Dax smiled, "he wants to do more than that…excuse me…" she stepped away to hail Julian.

_ _

_"Yes, well, that rather settles that, doesn't it?" he answered when she advised him of the change in plans, probably even angrier than he sounded, certainly emphatic._

"Well…" Dax wasn't quite sure what it settled, or if it settled anything. "Kira's saying we can delay departure a day if you're concerned about rejection -- "

_"Of course I'm concerned about rejection," he sputtered over her. __"I'm concerned about a great many things -- excuse me, but there's a bit of a difference between genetic intervention with a fetus, and genetic intervention with a grown child. So, no, I beg to differ, that's not all we can do -- certainly not all I can do…"_

"Julian…" she tried at that point.

_"Except there's nothing to discuss," he reminded. __"Nothing to talk me out of, because you can't…What's he going to do, say no? She's his own blood, for God's sake."_

He signed off at that point after reminding her to take care of herself and, so, no, perhaps fear of discovery wasn't on his mind. Perhaps he was only anxious to actually "do something" rather than the nothing they had spent doing the past two days.

"What's he want to do?" Kira was curious and at her elbow.

Other than take Nadya and her mother back with them to the station where he had the equipment he didn't begin to have there? Dax had her you-know-Julian look on her face. "What do you think he wants to do?"

Kira thought about the question, not for very long. "Well," she shrugged, "he's right. What's Shakaar going to do?"

"Say no?" Dax agreed. "She's his blood also. A few strains removed…"

"She's his blood," Kira assured.

Dax nodded. "Actually I was thinking more about Benjamin."

"I'll work it out with Benjamin."

"And Shakaar," Dax quite accurately suspected. "Well…" she sighed, resigned to Kira's notorious stubborn streak, not only Julian's. "That only leaves who?" The mother? The father? The child herself? And, of course, her grandfather, Anar. Sure to be comfortable and reasonable about leaving his granddaughter to the care and responsibility of the Federation on the heels of Janice Lange.

"My responsibility," Kira corrected, confident as Benjamin nothing would have happened to Lange or anyone if she, like Benjamin, had been made aware of Lange's association with Dukat from the beginning.

"I'll also leave you to work it out with Anar," Dax volunteered, while she continued to work on Julian. Somehow getting him to understand approaching Benjamin with the issue of boarding Nadya should not include springing the child and her mother on him, as in theirs being the first two faces Benjamin saw disembark the _Defiant after he saw the faces he expected to see. _

"And brother," Kira interjected over her thinking, apparently thinking similar thoughts. "We can't insist the woman leave her son behind; he's five months old!" 

"And her brother," Dax agreed.

"So, let's go," Kira gestured.

"Where?" Dax checked.

"The grotto!" Kira said. "We're just wasting time."

Probably why Julian made his getaway when he did. Nothing to do with her, fear, a guilty conscience or cowardice. Everything to do with not wanting to become involved in yet another rhetorical discussion about something or another; he had also had his fill of those.

"Let's go," Dax gestured. When they returned some eighteen hours later Julian was wearing a lather of Lange's frightful colored cream, artistically smeared underneath and along the side of his blackened purple eye. 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Madness," Bashir announced when Anar saw to joining him in Janice's laboratory where even notes were out of the question for a host of catalogued samples buried in a mountain of ones that weren't. He gave up early to pursue a detailed examination of the mummy, one he was intending to perform anyway. "You can begin with the idea that a team of scientists could make sense out of this chaotic clutter in two months time, hardly a week."

"Unfortunately Janice was preoccupied with trying to save lives, Doctor, rather than spend time dictating and documenting her study, however shortsighted or disorganized that might make her in your eyes."

"And you can end with your granddaughter taking off on some jaunt without even bothering to consult me." Bashir's waving tricorder slammed down on the examining table where the mummy lay insufficiently protected by her low-level sterile field, exposing her to any number of biohazards. The area was contaminated, however uncontaminated Anar insisted it remain. That not only insured any analysis would be markedly different than those performed by Janice and not seen to being documented so he could run comparison analyses, it tacked a question on the actual value of the mummy other than that of general interest.

Anar stared at the examining table for no reason other than he did. "As at the time there was no reason to believe Janice wouldn't always be with us. No reason to believe should she ever leave, she wouldn't return. And certainly no reason," his eyes stared into Bashir's, "to think she would ever be unable to communicate or remember what she had not taken the time to transcribe."

"I'm talking about Nadya," Bashir snapped. "Yes, she's been ill for six years. Yes, it can wait a day. It can wait six months if you don't mind the idea of your granddaughter living in pure hell, which apparently you don't, whereupon I do. I can't guarantee success if I'm not allowed the time to monitor the child for rejection or failure. I certainly can't guarantee anything if I'm not allowed to treat her in the first place."

"There will be ample time…" Anar nodded.

"She'll be too damned exhausted by the time she returns. Are you callous or simply dense? The child is ill."

"Tomorrow," Anar finished. "More than the child's body has to be ready, Doctor. The child has to be. Perhaps that isn't the way it is in your culture, but it is in mine. It isn't an immediate matter of life or death. As neither can you, in your own words, guarantee success, and therefore I will understand any risk there is for Nadya. Her parents will understand it. The child, if we can help her to. Failure, I understand. Rejection, I wait for you to clarify. Nadya's leukemia is in remission. Janice had extensive equipment when she first came to us. Her shuttle was a Bajoran science vessel. We salvaged what we could of her equipment after the second Klingon attack; they certainly didn't take anything with them other than the replicators. That one you see is obviously Cardassian, as obviously a gift from Anon. It can replicate clothes and crude implements from the raw materials we have available to us. What it can't do is raise Nadya from the dead if you in your determination to cure her, kill her; can you?"

"No. I came here prepared to collect plant clippings and soil samples. I would be out of my mind to attempt to do anything more than restore Nadya's immune response with the equipment I have with me -- which is my point!" Bashir charged. "The equipment is limited. I'm limited. The procedure I propose to do, while archaic, is extraordinarily simple. A matter of intravenous administration of her father's bone marrow, which if it's accepted, will replenish hers, which is largely destroyed. Your granddaughter is dying. One of these days she just won't have the strength not to die unless extensive therapies and treatments are forthcoming. In the meantime should the leukemia recur she will die within a matter of days not months. A reason why I'd like to be able to leave here at least reasonably confident the transplant is accepted, will continue to be accepted, and for that I need time to monitor her response, particularly since the best that can be offered her is less than ideal."

"Only eighty-two percent ideal," Anar understood. "You continue to underestimate what were Janice's abilities. Why do you think the leukemia is in remission?Nadya's had four such techniques performed. All of them successful to a certain extent, for a period of time."

"I don't think anything," Bashir assured. "I know I'm the doctor. The mutation at the cellular level is extensive. I can make adjustments for that given the opportunity, given the time."

"As do you for all your gifts lack Janice's grace," Anar's gaze dropped back to the mummy so patiently and peacefully waiting her turn. "If I were the one in charge of such things the worlds would find you in attendance to the dead, not Janice. Where respect has likewise been earned and should be forthcoming, though the ears aren't alive to hear, and the mouth isn't alive to tell if it isn't. Be advised what you don't say is nevertheless very clear. As what you do say be advised the walls do have ears. Hearing and repeating words other than mutant or monster."

It took Bashir a moment to understand what he was saying. When Anar looked up, if the doctor was angry before, he was angry now, tightly in control."So there was someone out there. Apparently you. Dax insisted she heard someone, or something. Before you misinterpret my request for discretion as some sort of dreaded fear of reprisal, understand the only fear I have is for Jadzia. She is legally, at least, married to Mister Worf. Who you may have noticed is Klingon. Need I elaborate?"

"Certainly not to feed my interest, Doctor," Anar assured. "I have none."

"Then why even bother mentioning it?" 

"A fair exchange of information. I won't tell, if you won't tell, in other words."

"About what? You? First Minister Shakaar or your brother Hawk? How alike the three of you aren't and in fact are with your dangling jars of cream and video cameras, you apparently not above waving either or all. Should I be surprised or simply disgusted, which I am. By the three of you."

"Kira," Anar corrected harshly. "Specifically the child Ziyal."

Bashir blinked, dumfounded. "You're mad, of course. Quite clearly."

"That's not an answer."

"To what's hardly a question," Bashir agreed. "The only child Kira's ever birthed was Chief O'Brien's. And even he wasn't their child, but rather Keiko's whom Kira carried in surrogate."

"I'm not questioning the child's parentage."

"No, you're questioning Kira's relationship with Ziyal's father, otherwise known as Dukat. Mad, as I said. I ought to do Kira a favor and tell you, yes, she was Dukat's mistress, but I'd rather not contribute to maligning her, if that's all right with you."

"I believe you mean protection," Anar retorted harshly. "Kira rambles because she's terrified; of that I am convinced."

"If Kira rambles," Bashir insisted, "she rambles because she's not allowed herself to grieve for Ziyal. Likely out of some reason as idiotic of being afraid someone like you would interpret her grief as evidence of a love affair rather than an innocent friendship with a young woman she cared for; one who just happened to be the daughter of Gul Dukat. In the meantime, beings must grieve. I don't care what species they are. Human, Bajoran or any other."

"Grieve…" Anar repeated slowly.

"Grieve," Bashir assured. "For some odd and obviously erroneous reason Kira must feel extraordinarily comfortable with you to bare her emotions to that extent…or at least consider baring them. In any event, if I were you I wouldn't consider revealing Jadzia's and my relationship regardless of how satisfying, or dissatisfying you find the answer. I might have to forget I'm a doctor. I haven't done that too often, and I'd much prefer not to ever have to do it again."

Anar chuckled. He couldn't help himself. While Bashir remained strikingly hostile he couldn't be serious with his threat; he told him as much. "If you were anyone else I might be tempted to believe you."

"Do I give a damn?"

"That would require common sense, Doctor." Anar walked away from him to stop, speaking with his back still turned. "If I agree to commit Janice's mummy to you, I trust the exams and analyses will incorporate a mandatory respect for the being she once was…the divinity of the soul she's become?" He turned back around to Bashir frozen in silence and rage. "We need the recognition as a Bajoran colony even if we don't need, or want the Federation's attention; we'll take it, however, obviously. Deal with it. Provided it is within reason. That is the offer on the table. The only offer on the table: legitimacy. But then as much as we love and admire Anon, Pfrann, Tan, all of them, we really don't want to become Cardassian; not this lifetime."

"To the devil with your colony," Bashir exploded. "Who you'll remand to me is your granddaughter for the therapies I can give her; for the life you took from her, the mother you killed, no one else. Damn Klingons, Cardassians, and damn you. How can you stand there in your hypocrisy? How can you stand yourself?"

"To the contrary, Doctor," Anar had already reared, "who you denounce as extortionist, voyeur, partisan, is a nine-year-old child. Interested, confused, suspicious and wary of the Federation, as we all are, for reasons not needing to be defended. As I insist the only interest in Kira's past is one of protection, not condemnation. Even if I'm forced to accept the innocence of Ziyal, that acceptance will never extend to Dukat. Kira is terrified of him, I maintain, not her reputation. Of him. By him. It plagues me to understand why -- for personal reasons, I admit," a thin smile returned to cool his tight lips. "And others far more esoteric. None of which have the least to do with madness of mind or jealousy that the woman I find interesting may have found herself at the bidding of his Prefect in some distant past, or merely a target of his abuse of her friendship with the child Ziyal, both equally enraging thoughts. But then I've never been a doctor, Doctor. Quite like you with your genetic enhancement, I've come to prefer my new life to my old. Still, like you, that can change, with surprisingly little difficulty -- I suggest you keep it in mind! Together with your affairs behind closed doors. We're not interested, and we prefer not to have it shook in our children's faces!"

He spun away from him that time to leave. Incensed, Bashir sprung. Probably as much in desperation as anger, uncertain as to where the argument would be going from there. Thinking of Worf. Counting the days left to the end of the week, paralyzed it wasn't nearly enough time for Jadzia not to falter in her commitment to him if confronted. Unconvinced it wasn't Curzon's plan all along; not regain, but maintain control. He lost control. Grabbing for Anar's shoulder, feeling his index finger compact and fracture as his fist connected with Anar's jaw.

More shocked than hurt, Bashir's surprising strike had Anar staggering back a step or two before he caught his balance to touch his cheek in disbelief and stare at the doctor. Bashir nodded content and satisfied, his voice calm as he shook his bruised hand. "Something I believe Jadzia owes you."

"If that's the case…" Anar snapped alive and lunged. Startled, Bashir reacted quickly enough to block the first punch and attempt to connect with another himself before a combination of superior strength and skill found him strangling in the Bajoran's powerful grasp as Anar slammed him up against the wall. Dazed, Bashir came to his senses on the floor, Anar standing over him.

"Something," Anar said as Bashir gingerly touched his blackened eye, "I believe Janice owes you."

Bashir nodded. "Can't be for her life, must be something else."

"Must be," Anar offered him a hand up; he accepted it. "O'Brien isn't the only one whose behavior was offensive, so was your own. Be glad that punch came from me rather than Anon."

"Yes, well, be glad mine came from me rather than Jadzia," Bashir suggested. "Quite all right. Guilty as charged, apologies in order and all of that, I hope you don't mind if I refrain from suggesting we shake hands. My aspiring to seduce your daughter really isn't the same as your willful assault of Jadzia…hardly the same," he touched his eye again. "I didn't assault Janice, never even verbally, whereupon your brother did. You'll accept your responsibility in that nightmare, the same as you'll accept your responsibility in the one you created for Nadya. You'll agree to her returning to DS9 with me for appropriate care because you have no choice but to agree."

"If I were the man of substance you are."

"You can't know the nightmare Jadzia has had to live!" Bashir's fists clenched, his voice shrill with desperation. "You have no right to pass judgment on what you can't begin to understand. Jadzia is my mate, not Worf's. But for a bizarre set of circumstances she would be my wife, not Worf's -- "

Anar caught his wrist. "In which I have no interest. To repeat. Behind closed doors are my instructions to you, not advice. I presume apart from that you will in turn accept your responsibility when the Klingon kills his mate for infidelity. In the meantime, I will take your advice of Nadya returning to Terok Nor with Nerys under consideration. Though understand it will not be without her mother -- "

"Of course it won't be without her mother," Bashir snapped. "I've no intentions of turning your world, or anyone's upside down. Kindly stop trying to turn mine!"

"Agreed," Anar said and left.

"Agreed," Bashir sputtered. Agreed to what? To whom? He hadn't agreed to anything. Wanting to hail Jadzia to hear the reassurance of her voice he managed not to, not wanting to alarm or upset her with what was truly nonsense. Wanting to pursue Anar and demand his word seemed absurd when all he'd come away with was the man's word. Rattling with nervous energy, frustration, and anger to the point he wasn't certain that he wouldn't just shake apart the throbbing pain in his hand commanded his attention. He grabbed his tricorder to evaluate the damage, forgetting about his eye until he sat at the console soothing the mending fracture and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the readout display half-swamped, as every square millimeter of the console was swamped, under Janice's extensive collection of samples. In reflex he moved to turn the massage on his face and stopped, the vibrant array of samples suddenly entrancing, his bio-repair unit forgotten in his hand.

_Whatever came over him? Was sure to be one of Dax's first questions. Curiosity? Was probably one of the better answers. Other than that? The availability of the samples and a test subject? He hardly threw caution entirely to the wind. Diligent in screening the exact condition of his eye before he settled on the first sample his hand touched. Dotting the cream along the bruised flesh, careful to keep it on the surrounding tissue only, the acidic compound momentarily causing his eyes to water. He grabbed for his tricorder, but everything was fine. The tearing cleared almost immediately. He supposed if the cream felt anything, it felt cool. From there he resumed the repair of his injured hand and set off on a fascinating stroll through the mummy's 4,000-year-old thorax for the next several hours._

"I'm sure there's a story behind that," Dax ventured when she showed up to find him sitting at the console in the process of applying a fresh lather of Lange's miracle.

Bashir grinned with an indication for her to have a look at the data log. "Zero change. Or at least no difference in what one would normally expect with an abrasion after…fourteen hours is it, really?" he expressed surprise with a check of the time.

"I don't know," Dax picked up the log with a smile, "is it?"

"Close enough," Bashir hopped down off his stool to take the padd out of her hand and pull her arms around him. "Should be the fifth. Only the fourth -- application," he clarified. "I lost track of the time. Understandable. It really is fascinating."

"Fascinating," Dax agreed with a cautious poke of the caustic smelling smear to have a look at what lay underneath.

Bashir laughed. "The mummy; Dolores. Or whatever her name is. She's fascinating. The ointment's fairly worthless; said that, didn't I? Four separate applications and there's no affect -- not on closed tissue injury anyway. Don't know about open. But then I certainly wasn't about to gouge myself to find out. No more than I was inclined to sock myself in the eye just to prove or disprove a point."

"Yes, you said that," Dax nodded. "And, no, of course, you wouldn't do that."

"Quite," he kissed her.

"That's cheating," she said as he kissed her.

"What's cheating? No, it isn't cheating. How is it cheating? It's hello. How are you? Glad to see you. How was your day?" he wondered softly, his face nestled comfortably against hers. Her hair stiff and smelling like organic residue. Her uniform filthy as the day before. Her jumpsuit damp under her field jacket. "Someone go for a swim? In this weather? Can't be serious. If that's not worth a scolding, I'm not quite sure what is."

"Well…" Dax was not about to say her day was apparently boring by comparison to his, if only because she didn't necessarily find his exciting. "Julian…" she asked, her tone encouraging, her finger seductively tracing the outline of his cheek, "what happened to your eye?"

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, obviously something happened to it."

"Obviously," she nodded.

"And, well," he grinned, "where should I begin? The beginning probably."

The one that included how aggravated he was to find out Nadya would not be available for treatment. Quickly graduating to the part about Anar wandering in to notify him how their secret was not their secret in an attempt to extort information about some imaginary relationship between Kira and Dukat.Dax straightened up from their cuddle listening intently.

"Can you imagine the audacity of the man?" Bashir fumed. "I was furious; I am furious. Apart from his version transcends exaggeration to an utter and complete lie…I mean, to hear him tell it you and I are little more than exhibitionists, frolicking naked in the Town Center, copulating like two nymphs, and that simply isn't true. It isn't," he stressed, not needing to, but she moved like she was preparing to move away from him and he stopped her, feeling the tension in her muscles.

"No," he acknowledged, "I wouldn't say the shuttle is exactly private. But it certainly is the extent of privacy you and I can expect to have. Surely our cabin is private. Who knew the child was there? Would even dream the child was there? Peering around corners when she wasn't rifling through the samples? Even though what I suspect actually happened as far as Nadya is she saw us outside. Where she fled after you heard her in the cargo hold. Damn her DNA inhibitor. Her DNA -- "

Dax stopped him, her fingers pressing lightly against his mouth.

"Is a nightmare," Bashir finished. "The child isn't a nightmare. Her genetic sequencing is."

"Julian, we just can't…" Dax began quietly.

"Do nothing?"

"Yes," she eyed the cream, eventually wiping it clean with the hem of her shirtsleeve to see just how willing he had been to do nothing.

"That was certainly sanitary," Bashir laughed.

She forgot to smile in return. "Julian, you have a black eye." And maybe she was wrong but when she left she didn't have this idea of the women going gaily off on their field outing, leaving the men free to start wrestling with each other in the dirt. 

"Yes, I know," Bashir said. "But really what can we do, darling? Certainly not berate or pound the man into submission. I learned that the hard way. Though in all fairness I was the one who threw the first punch. I don't know what came over me, other than rage? I wouldn't say we had exactly reached an impasse, but the argument was certainly going nowhere. Anar turned away, infuriating to the point that all I could think of was to hit him, and I did. Retaliation perhaps for the punch he gave you in Quark's? I don't know.My eye is certainly retaliation for the punch I gave him."

"Julian…" she said, really not satisfied with the direction of this conversation, never mind some argument with Anar.

"What I'm saying, darling," he urged, "is I took care of it, primitively, I admit. What I'm asking is let me take care of it? If I wanted to involve you, for that matter, upset you, I would have hailed you immediately. There really was no reason to do either. If I didn't understand Janice's decision to do nothing when faced with Hawk's ultimatum, I do now. But then really what could the man truly have expected me to say to him? What could he really have expected me to do?

"Rather the same," he said as she studied him, "if I didn't understand Anon's anger, and I believe I did, I do now. It is nothing less than an invasion of privacy. Obviously in their case, much more. But in ours, it is an invasion of privacy; we were 'behind closed doors'."

Dax nodded, one of consideration. "How do you know you took care of it?"

"I don't," Bashir admitted. "Quite frankly I don't believe his only interest was informing us. I do believe it was an attempt at extortion. Less to do with love affairs and Kira than it has to do with Shakaar. He wanted our silence. To ensure it, he went looking, digging, if you will, for something, anything, to hold over us. Has his brother's appetite for the salacious that's for sure. Mad, as well. For God's sake, Kira and Dukat?"

"Misinformed, anyway," Dax shook her head, really having difficulty herself with that part.

"Grossly," Bashir suddenly grinned again. "Though I'm not quite sure which would enrage Kira more. The idea Anar thinks she had a child at age twelve. Or the idea he thinks she's older than she is."

"I think we could probably stop with the child."

"Quite," Bashir agreed. "Dukat's child."

"And do something a little more conventional with that eye," she pushed him back down on the stool.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, it's entirely possible I didn't give the cream a chance to work."

"Yes," Dax could see where that might be a factor.

"Couldn't have been more than a couple of hours," his eyes closed under the bio-unit's massage. "Would be something of a miracle to expect instantaneous results."

"Something like that," Dax said. "We're expected for dinner in ten minutes."

"Informal dress apparently," his eyes opened with a reach for the unit.

"There's informal and then there's informal," Dax pushed his hand away. "Stop that."

"What?"

"You know what," she assured.

So he did. "Why?" he quipped. "Door's closed."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Funny," Dax mentioned as they strolled into the community dining hall with their heads held high, prepared to meet the lions, the lambs, or whoever else might be waiting their chance to pounce, "but there doesn't seem to be a bruise on Anar's chin."

"Noticed that, did you?" Bashir agreed. "Perhaps I didn't hit him hard enough. Quite all right. I was just about to say…funny, but while I wouldn't go as far to say Kira appears to have been recently shampooed, you really are a dreadful sight by comparison."

"I wouldn't say I went for a swim exactly," Dax denied.

"No, and as long as you remembered to wash your hands I'm sure no one can complain…this all right?" he stopped at one of the long tables heavily laden with fruits and bread.

"Yes, that's fine…anywhere. It doesn't matter," Elise turned around from her impatient instructions to one of the men. Her son balanced on her narrow hip accentuated by her streamlined trousers and knee-high boots as filthy as Kira's, still nowhere near as filthy as Dax. She paused in her permissive wave toward Bashir to pry the meat of a skinless peach out of her son's mouth, the infant busily entertaining his own appetite and/or boredom by sucking on the piece of fruit. "No, you can't have this…where did you get this?" she scolded with a look around for her daughter before she looked down.

"He's hungry?" Nadya said.

"Yes, I know he's hungry. You're hungry; we're all hungry; sit, no, sit," she steered Nadya toward a seat at the table. "You see Kira talking to Anar, she'll be here."

"Anywhere's fine," Bashir smiled at Dax.

"Wash my hands?" she countered.

"Did you?" he grinned.

"Sit," she pulled out a chair.

"Yes, thank you," he sat down, across from Elise changing her mind about Nadya sitting until she had tossed the remnants of her brother's snack in the solid waste disposal. "Not the replicator," she called after Nadya, scurrying off into the other room. "The waste disposal."

"She knows which one," Sian set down a bowl of jellied vegetable salad for his son and platter of hasperat for the table.

"Yes, she knows which one. If she pays attention, she knows which one," Elise agreed, advising San the salad he could eat, would eat, should eat and promptly dove into with both hands to eat.

Bashir could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise and his appetite decline. The clatter of the plates suddenly seemed very loud. The talking of the people, the shuffling feet. He realized he really didn't want to be there at all, sitting down with any of them. Wondering what they were thinking behind their eyes, saying behind their hands. 

"Kira's coming," Nadya was back with a stage whisper for her mother.

"I know," Elise teased, equally animated with a smoothing brush of the daughter's hair, the fragile strands clinging to the sticky residue of San's fruit.

"Here," Sian unwound the long, thin scarf wrapped around his neck for Elise to clean her hand.

"No, it's all right," Elise plucked the hairs free, with a smile for Nadya watching them float to the ground; her hand she wiped across the back of her son's shirt. 

"It's falling out again," Nadya nodded. "It's okay. I like it."

"Yes, but not to eat. You and Janice, the two of you."

"You all right?" Dax asked quietly as she handed Bashir the hasperat.

"Apart from I'm about to vomit and mad as hell," his head dipped. "Quite. You?"

"Never better."

"Yes," he said. "What's it called? Not giving them the satisfaction?"

"Is that what it's called?"

"Yes," he said.

"Either that or a family," Dax smiled at Nadya, the child's legs pumping in an excited kick under the table, trying to pretend she didn't notice Kira.

"We used to have contests," she told Dax. "Janice and I."

"What sort of contests are those?"

She set her hasperat down to toss her head back, shaking the loose strands of hair free and laughing up at her grandfather. "Where's the yamok sauce?"

"Right here," he set a small cruet down in front of her with a tap of its corked top and gesture for Kira to please be seated.

"You like yamok sauce?" Bashir said surprised.

"No," Nadya made a face. "Why? Do you?"

"Well, I think it's all right in small doses. I have a friend though, yes, Garak, who enjoys it quite a lot -- "

"Ziyal's Garak?" Nadya interrupted him in excitement, and was it Dax's imagination or did the room suddenly seem extraordinarily quiet?

Bashir didn't know what to say. Reactions varying from expecting a public disclosure about him and Dax to disbelief Anar could be so determined as to turn a dinner conversation into an interrogation. "Ziyal…" he stared across the table at Kira seated at the child's side.

She nodded. "Lange explained about Ziyal and Garak in her letter."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, that would make sense…" he had to think hard for a moment as to how it would. "Yes, of course it would. After all Ziyal was Anon and Pfrann's sister. Though, no, I wouldn't…" he smiled at Nadya, "necessarily say Garak was Ziyal's…" he could feel Dax's eyes on him in forewarning to watch his wording. "Friend, of course," he smiled again at the treacherous little girl. "Yes, Garak and Ziyal were quite good friends. Rather the same as Garak and I."

"Did you see the footprints?" she asked.

"Footprints?" Bashir repeated.

"Commander Dax saw the footprints," she explained happily to Anar for some reason. "She said they were too large to be mine."

"Perhaps," Anar accepted with a call for the wine that was missing, never mind the Cardassian yamok sauce that was there. "Or perhaps a shadow in the mud."

"Yes," Elise seconded his request with a scream for the dark haired young woman seated at the adjoining long table with her men.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Yes, of course, those footprints -- outside the shuttle," he smiled at the young woman arriving breathlessly apologetic with two silver urns of wine. "Hectic day?"

"The day is fine," Elise answered for her with a snatch for the wine. "Sit; eat. Go eat like we want to eat."

"Elise is a perfectionist." The young woman had the sense and grace to have humor about her as Bashir's look flickered over Elise having a good idea what he was looking at. Odd, but he never would have assumed a Bajoran Maquis outfit would uphold the D'jarras.

"Actually…" Dax said from behind her hand.

"Actually nothing," he said. "That rather complicates things also, doesn't it? Caste discrimination?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Dax smiled. "Winn's certainly a traditionalist. That didn't stop Bajor's successful bid for admission to the UFP."

"Winn," Bashir rolled his eyes in contempt for Bajor's domineering religious leader. Fanatical and mad the woman was. "Successful, more probably in spite of Kai Winn. Hardly an example of a reasonable or sound mind. Equable perhaps to Dukat."

"True," Dax said. "But you're still wrong."

"Wrong?"

"I'll explain it later," she promised because right now for all the attention he didn't want them to incur they had just about everyone's; there was just something about those whispered private conversations.

"It's synthale," Kira contested Bashir's dilly-dallying in disgust.

"Oh, yes," Bashir picked up the urn to pass it on. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were waiting for me."

"We were just wondering about the cruet of yamok sauce," Dax explained to Nadya.

"It's for Anon and Pfrann," she said.

"For when they return," Dax understood.

"Yes. Did you tell him I apologized?"

"Apologized?" Bashir said.

"Doctor Bashir is right," Anar upheld Bashir's uncertainty and the child's innocence. "Curiosity is understood from one of your age. Apologies are not necessary."

"For the samples?" she questioned.

He couldn't help but smile. "Perhaps for the samples, yes."

"It's okay," she assured. "We got better ones -- right?"

"You're right," Dax agreed.

"Good," she yawned, her charged energy beginning to wear on her. "What time do my father and I have to meet the Federation?"

"That's you," Dax cued Bashir.

"Oh," he said. "Morning?"

"Can I eat?" she pushed her hasperat away to put her head down.

"Eat?"

"What if I swallow?" she negotiated. "Janice used to tell me to swallow…" she picked at her brother's shirt, finding a thread to twirl.

"Tired?" Elise asked.

"No," she denied as usual, her eyes closing to open, watching Dax across the table. "Did you really see the footprints?" she wondered. "Or were they just shadows in the mud?" 

"We can also do something about that," Bashir argued against continuing to let the child shed like some Circassian cat when the dining hall was cleared and they waited for Anar to return to confirm Nadya's treatment was, in fact, scheduled for the morning.

"Julian…" Dax suggested what she had been suggesting, though not necessarily in so many words, "you need to try and relax."

"I can't relax," Bashir propped himself against the edge of the long table because he didn't feel like sitting. "This isn't some primitive world…"

"Yes, it is."

"No, it isn't. If it were then, yes, I could relax…I would be relaxed. Understanding, if not comfortable with their rituals. Respectful, if not appreciative of their apprehension -- these aren't some primitive people."

"Yes, they are," Dax said.

"They're not supposed to be," Bashir challenged Kira with her usual indifference toward what was obvious and self-explanatory to her and therefore should be obvious and self-explanatory to everyone else, opposed to her usual raging rants when what was obvious and self-explanatory to her failed to impress itself on anyone else. 

"Who are you talking to?" she said.

"You," he assured, "I'm talking to you. The occupation's been over six years."

"Uh, huh," she said, and she was right according to Dax. The Cardassians decimated Bajor Prime and her worlds of colonies. Whatever Bajor had been was moot because it certainly wasn't much of anything by 2369 and the Cardassian withdrawal, regardless of their technologies, their intelligence, their lives. They had only recently set off to set themselves firmly back on track with Vedek Bareil's Cardassian Peace Accord in 2371 and the election of Shakaar Adon as First Minister that same year, reasonably quieting the world's internal power struggles and threats of civil war.Here the occupations by whomever along with their wars were over ten months? A year?

There were some minor discrepancies in Anar's chronology and numbers. Dax thought about that later. Right now she was listening to Julian's irritated rattle, not Anar's smooth, mildly condescending speech. In a few minutes she was listening to the two of them when Anar returned to flow across the floor in what weren't the robes of a Vedek monk but could have been. That was probably one of Julian's problems. Anar wasn't a monk. He didn't look like a monk. He looked like…?

Dax wasn't sure what Anar looked like other than far less trustworthy than he looked in more practical dress.Practical for whom? She settled a look Kira's way, sitting with her deadpan expression. Practical for those who piloted crafts when they weren't wading waist deep through gray pools of silt and mud without having to worry about their skirts or gowns getting in the way. Trousers and boots were probably far more practical for working in the fields also. That was probably why Lange wore them. For all the pretensions Lange didn't have, Anar did. No more really than the majority of them, no less.

That was probably one of Anar's problems. Julian had pretensions. Unintentionally when it wasn't intentional, he wasn't intentionally pretentious now, only obviously attempting to speak evenly and calmly, his hyperactive, kinetic-like energy underscoring how obviously. Anar was smooth, tolerant, full of wisdom. Dax noticed that later, she also noticed it now listening to him agreeably confirm Nadya's availability in the morning and debate Julian's mention of her chronic hair loss.

"At the very least it would help with the child's self image," Bashir said.

"You are presuming there is something wrong with Nadya's self image," Anar countered.

"No, I'm not saying that," Bashir groaned, seeking support from Dax because he certainly wasn't going to get any from Kira.

Dax wasn't concerned with Kira. Kira's reactions and responses, excluding Anar and the initial mentioning of Ziyal, were textbook routine. Anar's accusation, which was what it was, not an insinuation, was untrue more than it was unnecessarily inflammatory; that was not what Julian was saying, nor what he said. 

Dax was more adept at undercutting than Bashir, not at all defensive. Simply factual and simply said, leaving little room for misinterpretation, less for debate. Argument was another story. But any argument would have to come from Anar's direction, not hers, making Anar argumentative, not her. "You look pretty stylish," was what she said with a smile on her face. Her hands clasped behind her back in her open, relaxed stance.

If there was one of them Anar liked without the added attraction he felt toward Kira, it was Commander Dax. He didn't miss her point; it would have been extraordinarily difficult to miss it, the same as her. Incorporating the celestial with her blended aura of insight, humor, and peace, if there was a singular facet of Commander Dax impossible to deny it was that she was an advanced intelligent lifeform. Gracious, helpful and attentive to her companions whether or not they were her evolutionary equals, which none of them were. That alone probably explained her ability to see Ziyal's footprints in the mud, less her ability to see Ziyal. 

Power of suggestion probably explained Bashir's.

Anar laughed. What else could he do? The twinkle in his eyes brighter than the one in Dax's, his smile broader. Bashir, he knew, remained precariously balanced on his edge of just wanting to throttle him, take the child and the shuttle and go home.

Kira? He was at his wits end with Kira and she was at hers with him.The man was the man he was. Tall tanned and strong. The robes were the sackcloth they were. The trousers and boots, routine. She wasn't impressed enough to be bored or dazzled. He was resigned to having to try a different way. He dropped the subject of Nadya's hair Bashir had brought up to talk of quarters for the night and ideas for the evening's social plans. Knowing Kira's restless energy was as restless as his, and though it was late, it was still early. The Temple, her short walk from the Town Center, extensive conversations waiting to be had. Kira exerted herself into the conversation now to cut him off with the first sentence. "I'll show them," she volunteered.

"Well, no," Bashir said to Dax in case she had some other idea, "whether or not I want to return to the shuttle, it makes no sense to return to the shuttle."Particularly since by the time they walked there, they would have to turn around and walk back.

He fairly stalked down the corridors of the center, deaf to the thousands who had walked before, all of them haunting their world still. Pulling his field jacket off as he stalked, looking back and forth across the hall at the lengths of non-modular chambers set back in their stone casements.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "No, of course it doesn't matter," he decided. Choosing one and flinging his field jacket down on what may as well be the floor. Some sort of linen mat is what it looked like to him.In tune with his rhythm he turned around to pause in the doorway, his arms draped and pushing against the alloy frame, his mouth open as if he were about to say something.

"What?" Kira said.

"Nothing," Bashir shook his head and set off down the darkened corridor, back the way they had come. "Forgot Nadya's treatment plan, that's all. Quite all right. I know where I am. Can find my way back…"

Dax grimaced when she heard him walk into something after he rounded the corridor junction, probably the wall. "Springball?" she joked to Kira, not about Julian's coordination, but how she might like to spend the remainder of her off-hours.

Kira snorted. "I wish." A day spent wrestling the jungle underbrush of the river's banks she wouldn't mind vesting any unspent energy in a rigorous game or two. "Actually," she said, "I wouldn't mind getting a night's rest."

"That's not a bad idea," Dax agreed, opting to have a look in the chamber next to Julian's and the one across the hall; they were the same. "Does it matter?" she asked.

"No," Kira said. Truthfully unable to recall which one she had borrowed the night before.

"Easy to do," Dax nodded, counting the evenly spaced doorways along the wall; there were fifteen of them on each side. "Forget," she smiled at Kira. "Do you know what this was?"

"No…" Kira cast a half-ambitious glance around the corridor, reminiscent of one aboard a ship with its tight, uniform design. "I should. I've seen it before. Security, maybe."

"Town jail, yes." That's what Dax was thinking. "Explains why the doors work."

"Well, Anon…" Kira passed off, "apparently helped conduct some repairs."

"Or at least ordered them," Dax nodded. Foregoing mentioning Kira's distancing Anon from the name Dukat to agree how while she may see Anon Dukat doing a lot of things, she couldn't see him "sweating his butt off" as the Chief would say. Physically powerful, Cardassians were notoriously averse to performing menial tasks and manual labor, which was why they had a tendency to employ slaves to do it for them. An ancient people themselves, a world of artists, upon the military coming to power very little of their ways had changed. Thinking of that Dax was able to place something else. That's what Anar had, the Bajoran strut. Kira's strut. The one that drove the Cardassians insane.

"Definitely…" Kira was agreeing about Anon Dukat inherent laziness that had to be.

"Well…" Dax sighed with a look up the hall where Julian was yet to be found returning. "He's either lost, or involved…or found a shower. Do they happen to have…"

"No," Kira scoffed at the idea. "A town bath."

"I'll pass." Though not because she was self-conscious or unduly inhibited.

So would Kira for the same reasons.

"It's too cold," Dax laughed.

So it was. The environmental systems all supplied and controlled by Nature. It was cold outside, it was cold inside. Colder; the corridors, dank tunnels leading in and out of the Town Center frigid and numbing. "There's a sonic shower, yes, off Lange's lab. We can use that in the morning."

"The surgical suite. I forgot about that. Morning will be fine…And well," she said cleverly with another look up the corridor where Julian remained unfound, "maybe I should use the time to work on my report for Benjamin before Julian's back and pounding on the door for some reason."

"Tell him you're tired," Kira sneered, briefly eyeing the corridor herself before resettling on Dax.

Dax smiled. "Doesn't work."

"No," Kira agreed, "it doesn't."

"No," Dax said, thoughtful for a moment before she treaded carefully into the subject of Anar. "You know, if you really want to…"

"I don't want to do anything," Kira cut her off with an abrupt, sharp turn into the chamber immediately facing her.

Dax nodded as the door closed, agreeing Kira couldn't be any more comfortable here really than Julian for her own reasons, few of them having to do with Anar or his Maquis. It would be like having stepped down on Bajor Prime six years ago to find only thirty-five of them left alive.

Or at least set down on the outskirts of a remote farming village, not its Capitol city. But still it would be like stepping down to find only thirty-five survivors globally, all clustered together in this one ravaged town. She smiled up the corridor to Bashir's head cautiously peering around the corner. Her eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, she wished she could say the same for the overwhelming smell of dampness that psychologically anyway had to reek of death. There were cities out there, she knew there were, long since abandoned, silent as the mines. It would be interesting to learn whose cities they had been, whose world, before it came to be claimed by Bajor Prime four to six hundred years ago; her best guess to the age of the structures around her, dating somewhere back to Bajor's early days of space flight. Perhaps that's what Anar didn't want them to know, and knew he was opening a door to. Though the mummy was a Bajoran female in its exterior structure when lifted from her grave of 4,000 years -- Dax admitted fascination with the details of the cadaver so extraordinarily preserved -- they were a long, long, way from Bajor Prime an isolationist people for the past 25,000 years or so.

"Kira?" Bashir was mouthing as he approached her, his gesturing data padd and arching eyebrows supporting the question.

"Gone to bed," Dax turned toward their quarters where he carelessly tossed the data padd aside to discard his jacket and shirt, balancing against the wall to pull off his boots. So much for wanting to protect his study from prying eyes and hands.

"A convenient excuse?" she smiled amused for the log.

"What?" He helped himself to helping her out of her jacket.

"For staying up all hours of the night," she nodded, not that either of them could see well enough to read.

"Why? Kira say something?" he folded his arms around her.

"About Anar? No."

"Bother," he kissed her, really not interested in discussing Anar. "Half-tempted to myself. Not the details, no. But about the brief exchange of fisticuffs…Call it a minor difference of opinion -- damn!" he released her suddenly. "It's freezing in here. Aren't you cold?"

"You just noticed?" Dax laughed as he grabbed for his jacket to pull it on.

"More preoccupied with the stench," Bashir eyed the mat with trepidation.

"It's a Cardassian bed roll." 

"Yes." One merely unrolled and spread out. He knew that probably somewhere in the back of his mind. Caring more than he probably wished to. "Telltale smell. Doubt if I'm the only one on the verge of vomiting…"

"Julian…" she reminded as he exited into the corridor following what could hardly be called a preliminary cautious check for occupants. 

"Quite all right," he said. "Has to be another one of them around here somewhere. There's two of us, after all, as I'm sure there were far more than one of them borrowing on Anar's hospitality -- yes," he was quickly satisfied to find one conveniently right next door, reasonably clean as the other one.

"At least in the dark," Dax helped him roll the stiff insulated pad so they could get out of there before Kira's senses roused her from her meditation and had her wondering about the commotion and voices out in corridor.

"No, she can't hear us," Bashir maintained as they snuggled down under the warmth of the second roll and their jackets."Certainly not about to conduct a bed check."

"No," Dax wasn't thinking that. 

"Good," Bashir kissed her; no more inclined to think about anything than he was a few minutes before. "Private as the shuttle could ever be, I insist. Not breaking any rule."

_That logic might be something that was briefly flitting through Dax's mind however, no, that wasn't it either. _

"Why I would be tempted to tell Kira," Bashir explained when asked, "is it's hardly our begging for his silence Anar wanted, but our silence. Two can play that game. I'd like to hear his answer as to why the exchange of fists when asked by Kira. Wouldn't you?"

"No," Dax said, hardly needing to give the proposal much thought to determine it really wasn't worth the risk.

"The devil it's not. The devil there's any risk at all. I could hear him trying to divulge our affair in the midst of what? Accusing Kira of one with Dukat? I think not. Simply a matter of bringing that to his attention…what?" he laughed at her watching him. "I'm not the devious one, he is. No more than I'm the one bogging us down with all this needless walking. It's a delay tactic, I'm telling you. For whatever reason, control more than likely. That's all; control. Whatever he thinks he's controlling. I'm not the one with the misplaced priorities, I'm the doctor being denied the chance to treat a patient."

"You'll be able to take care of Nadya tomorrow," she assured.

"We'll see. In the meantime, yes, if I could get that out of the way then maybe I could find the time and interest in focusing on some mummy…"

"You're interested," she nodded.

"Plants and trees," he agreed, enjoying the closeness of their bodies. "Rather the same as I would just like to spend some time focusing on you. Sleep I can probably do without…the same as this jacket," he sat up to cast it aside for good this time, settling to smile at her beautiful face smiling back into his, his hand lightly combing its way through her loose hair. 

"My God, I love you," he said. "Kill anyone who tried to hurt you; I would. Odd thought. Odder still perhaps feeling it, knowing it, above all that it's true."

"Yes, it's true," she said, talking about her feelings and him. In that way the smile on her face as misleadingly gentle as his. So don't push her, was what she wasn't saying, not to him or about him, but Anar. Don't give her a reason to prove just how inept a Bajoran would actually be attempting to pit himself against the skill and strength of a woman who wasn't a Klingon.

"My God ,you're beautiful," Bashir concentrated on her face, the softness of her flesh touching his, not the muscles in the arms around him, or the chest lying under his. "Your eyes. Smile. Welcome sight. They're sullen if they're nothing more. Empty. Robbed of their souls and personalities, I don't know. That Elise certainly is. Sian. Don't even try. Other than that one hollered down on like she was a servant."

"Comfort woman," Dax nodded.

"What?" Bashir said.

"Um, hm," she nodded. "She's pregnant. Elise is a strict matriarch. You may not

marry, but you do mate. Pledge, at least, selectively. The point of the coupling is the children you bear, hopefully female. 'Fool for a mother, fool for a father as well' is how she views the union…possibly explains Anar's interest in Kira's relationship with Ziyal," she paused, wondering now that she thought of it.

"Well, there you have it," Bashir agreed. "Can't believe it. There's what? Not but four women here. Bit absurd to start shunning or labeling each other when faced with no less than extinction, which they are extinct. Regardless of who bears one or who bears twenty-five by whomever. They're extinct. There simply aren't enough of them."

"Well," Dax said, "actually I think it's a more realistic picture than the one Anar would prefer to show. They're people, Julian. People. Some of conservative sects, others not. Their numbers large or small mean nothing other than these are the ones who survived."

"And I'm only a doctor," he shook his head at their sanctioned ignorance and bigotry. "Pregnant. That explains one's refusal for a medical screening."

"Well, that may have had something to do with wanting to be the one to make her announcement rather than you."

"Examine," he said. "Not make an announcement. What do I care? Other than the woman should have a medical screening; probably needs a medical screening for all I know. That's the point. For all I know."

"As long as that's all you do."

"What?" he said. "What?" he laughed as she smiled.

"I'm teasing you," she kissed him, marking the end to the conversation. He fell asleep on her shoulder. She lay there for a short while listening to his rhythmic breathing and the silence around her. He stirred once when she eased her arm out from under him to dress, the door sounding so loud when it opened. She looked back but he was sleeping, and she was descending the stairs of the town hall to stand in its center deciding Anar would be found at the Temple rather than home. She was right, patiently waiting in the numbing cold for him to emerge some thirty minutes later.


	4. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He thought she was a man at first. The shadow rising up from the wall to greet him was his height and size. The communicator pinned to her breast caught what little light the night afforded telling him the figure was in uniform, Federation, in turn Commander Dax, and so it was the hair that had deceived him. Clipped back in its bouffant braid, its fullness indiscernible from a hat in the dark, he would have realized it was her immediately. The head was flat though. The hair unstrapped and loose. She looked younger, different, or perhaps simply less austere. Her smile was the same. Placid, welcoming.

So was his the same with a note of shrewdness in his tone. "You belittle his influence, if not him."

"Do I?" her smile and pleasantry remained.

  


"Or perhaps I do," Anar entertained, inviting her to walk with him, or stand, whichever she chose. She chose to walk. They did for a few steps. "Initially possibly. Something to do with the darting eyes and nervous hands -- that, and he isn't a strong man," he stopped, the shrewdness heightened and dry. She continued waiting pleasantly. "What I forgot was arrogance requires confidence, not necessarily strength. Slow to react, I'll never turn my back on him again. His fist as easily could have been a steel pipe. Were one available, I'm not sure it wouldn't have been."

Dax didn't even have to think about that. "Actually," she said, "Julian would much prefer simply to inform Kira of the altercation, leaving you to explain the reasons why."

He understood the connotation. From attempted bribery, to disparaging remarks concerning the Trill and the Human, to Kira and Dukat, chances were Nerys would be extremely upset and not with Bashir. "Now, why didn't I think of that?" he agreed. "Underestimating his deviousness as well. Your Doctor Bashir is an interesting study, Commander, I may be forced to admit. Misleading with those darting eyes and nervous hands. Something, I trust, of which you are already aware."

"Overconfidence?" the Trill was more interested in pursuing the subject of him.

"Or less than I would care to have," Anar acknowledged the Temple behind them, her shadowed structure dominating theirs. "It's one or the other, most would probably say. In truth, it's neither.

"As it is true," he proposed coyly, aware of the contradiction between his ancient flowing robes and the man wearing them, "despite the humbleness of my robes I would say sovereign long before I said monk, though I have never cared to be either. The naked body of a lover lies beneath these robes, not a father. I pray for ideas perhaps not direction or guidance. What do I do? Not how. The Hawk commanded an army after all, not a town of thirty-five."

She laughed an amused laugh, ignoring the unnecessary provocative reference to body, lover, sticking to the numbers. "Of which 2,000 died. How many did you say abandoned the colony? To join the Federation in the Dominion war, or continue with their own?"

"More than one," he agreed. "You also don't see my eclectic graveyard of cruisers and scout ships."

"The mines," she nodded.

"Where they were first hidden, now long dead, stripped and abandoned as the caves that house them," he accepted the logic of her presumption. "We walked, but not too far. If you could identify them I could be even more impressed."

"Romulan," she assured. "Perhaps not all of them."

"No, all would likely include Federation, Ferengi, and a lengthy list of others. Curiosity, only. Was it my use of the term scout ship? Or my proposed familiarity when I boarded the _Defiant that has you wondering about Romulans?"_

She shook her head. "The Klingons."

"Something would have had to inspire them this far out of bounds," he understood. "It couldn't have been the Cardassians? Anon following a familiar path?"

She continued to shake her head. "Cardassian or Jem'Hadar activity in the area would not have escaped Federation attention.You mentioned gravitic sensor nets to Benjamin. Reasonably accurate in detecting cloaked Klingon vessels, it's no secret the Federation has yet to develop a reliable technology for detecting Romulan."

"Where Klingons are always alert for Romulans," he nodded, "if they are alert for no other. Cloaking ability aside, our tachyon traces would have advised, not only inspired them, the one enemy, the true enemy, the old, was around them."

"Klingons are always alert," she said simply.

"The Federation, Cardassians and the Dominion apparently not. An interesting theory," he admitted. "One that could explain much while failing to explain how or why we came to be here to be rousted by the Klingons."

"The Federation-Dominion war," she reminded. "Bajor's no resistance agreement with the Dominion. You were rousted by the Jem'Hadar initially. Scattering the surviving 3,000 of your troops across the sector where you had suspected a Dominion-Cardassian encampment. One you came here to investigate, attack, quite possibly successfully destroyed, or I don't think you would have stood down. Three thousand survivors aren't five, but they're enough. You rendezvoused in the asteroid belt, not fled there, to regroup and go home. The Klingons were coincidental. Gowron's Intelligence probably also having heard of the Dominion-Cardassian camp on the Bajoran border, arriving just after you. Tachyon traces confirmed Romulan activity, regardless of any other. The Romulan Star Empire also signed a no resistance agreement with the Dominion."

"Either that," his head tipped, "or the camp was Klingon. The attacking force Jem'Hadar who arrived before me to ultimately engage my squadrons as well. The Klingons regrouping, infused by reinforcements too late to protect their base, but never too late to fight."

She looked at him; he smiled. "Continue."

"Anon commanded a single transport," she said. "A risk and position mandated by his rank and battle experience. The Cardassians waiting until the end of the war to send him into an area where they knew Klingon squadrons continued to patrol."

"Either that," he said, "or Anon was lost, off course. Or he was en route to establish Cardassian control over a former Klingon base poised on their border. As I said, an interesting theory, both of ours. You or I either right. You or I wrong. Does it really matter? Cardassians, Klingons, Jem'Hadar. Twenty thousand beings died out here eighteen months ago. Five thousand, three, ten Bajorans. Dissention in our ranks as we lingered to collect and count our numbers leaving how many to survive the first Klingon attack. How many to fight and abandon their own, how many to die, there still remains only thirty-five."

Of an army. Dax suspected 5,000 was probably close to the actual number. She gazed back at the Temple. "No, it doesn't matter," she said.

"Not even Romulans. But then it's also no secret Maquis membership, support, or supporters, could be found to be as eclectic as our crafts -- whatever we could beg, borrow or steal."

She laughed her amused laugh again for the Terran idiom. "By general rule perhaps. Why do I think when it came to membership your outfit was strictly Bajoran regardless of whose cruisers you appropriated?"

"Probably something to do with the name Shakaar. A grass root operant whether I care to admit to it or not; I care not."

Whereas likening himself to a former Maquis General he didn't mind. Dax nodded, convinced the root of Julian's annoyance could be found in the word Maquis, aggravated by a personality clash. Probably also much of Kira's. Definitely Benjamin's. "Or something to do with you," she said. "Janice Lange and the Dukats unique in many ways."

He laughed. "Or not is probably what confuses you more. For the man gives every indication of being an isolationist. Taken to a personal extreme, I acknowledge I am. Little to do with race, mine or any other.My world? I know less of my world than you probably do. Leaving at fifteen and returning eighteen short months ago. Anon's, on the other hand? Gowron's? The Federation? You can't fight an enemy you don't understand. I was only in the process of learning the Dominion and their weapon Jem'Hadar. Their battle formula surprisingly simplistic. Dukat's reasoning strikingly clear to me. Sheer numbers. Driven as the ruthless Romulan. Suicidal as the savage Klingon."

"And yet we won," she smiled.

He looked at her. Such foolishness misplaced on her. She was voicing UFP propaganda rather than her own belief. She sighed eventually under the interest in his eyes. "Rendezvoused at our own outposts, at least, to collect and count our numbers. Be wary of dissention in united ranks. Be advised."

"I didn't say that," he replied.

No, she did. Not quite sure why only that it made sense.On political as well as personal levels. She smiled again, pleasant and calm. "Julian is my mate. Ziyal an innocent for whom Kira felt compassion. Similar to Julian and Nadya. Similar to you and Janice Lange. Similar to you and Anon and Pfrann Dukat. All else is irrelevant."

"Thank you," he said, "though I still see a difference."

"So does Benjamin," she assured, "when he looks at you and Anon Dukat."

"Benjamin?" he said as if there were some other commander or some other station other than Deep Space Nine she may be talking about.

"Captain Sisko," she clarified.

He nodded. "No doubt waiting to hear just what you have managed to find out about Anon Dukat and his adopted band of Maquis refugees. With risk of heightening your suspicions the mines and souls buried within them are best left alone and forgotten."

"Or at least interested in Lange's botanical compound," she agreed. "I have an idea he'll also be open to Julian's desire to transport Nadya with her mother and brother to the station for her necessary therapies. The issue of legitimacy is really Kira's decision to recommend or refute, though I'm sure Benjamin will have questions of all of us, and again, I wouldn't be surprised by his answer."

He ignored her, intentionally. "Anon's transport really isn't very far, if you care to confirm the crash site."

"Walking distance?" she frowned, trying to imagine Dukat and his Cardassians agreeable to walking farther than the next dinner table.

"No," he said. "Simple obedience to the rules once informed. The rule of no transport within a ten-mile radius of the town applies to all. As it applies to the grotto."

"Limiting the risk of furthering contamination to the mummy or her original environment," she said. "Lange's request isn't unreasonable under the circumstances."

"Dissention," he assured. "Honoring Janice's concerns for contamination and how she knows far better than I about such things, I know our power sources while sophisticated rather than primitive, are limited. The mummy is tangible. A reason to walk."

"Now, why didn't I think of that?" she smiled.

"I don't know," he said.

She nodded. "Admiring Benjamin, I have never envied him his position, or the duty of crew management that accompanies it. It's not easy."

"Anything else?" he wondered.

Perhaps just one thing. She turned on her heel to depart with her smile and a wink of her eye. "Julian's right. You should be glad the punch came from him."

_He as well, Commander. He didn't trouble himself with calling after her whether or not it would have troubled her to hear. "One of mine rather than Anon's. Or for that matter, one of your mate's, the Klingon. Dukat, should we ever meet, is solely mine." He swore that oath by the Prophets, hearing the child Ziyal sigh beside him._

"You're such a stubborn man, Shakaar Adon, the elder. Preferring lies when you know the truth. Kira can't just be my friend? Must she be my mother?"

"She can be either or," he swore again. "The disgust you sense in me is for your father. Your brothers and my relationship is one of trust and truth, would you require something other between you and I?"

"Tact, maybe?" Ziyal bit her leathery lip as he walked away. "You're so like him in your own way when you care to be. I'm not sure if that's good or bad."

_"Risky!" Q ventured with an illuminating smile and the lyrical prose of her Prophets to further entice her into seeing things his way. The illustrious gaudiness of his flowing red robes and high-topped crown were, as always, strictly for show. "The fate of the galaxy relies on His PustuleDukat's union with his eternal mate, who shall remain nameless, if you prefer, and the birth of their eldest son."_

Ziyal laughed. "Kira. Yes, of course, I know it's Kira. You know I know it's Kira. I've always known it's Kira -- "

"It doesn't take a quantum physicist to figure it out," Q's hand gently clapped over her mouth.

"Nor an advanced lifeform," Ziyal assured.

"True," Q concurred. "And figure it out, those who aren't us will, each in their own time. The Bajoran Anar as well. You're right not to answer his demands. Seeing what your Prophets see, hearing what they say, instead of deciding for himself how best the chosen serve. Wrong in his presumption Major Kira is his mate rather than your father's, he is right in his notice of a strong woman. A brave woman. A woman capable of silencing Dukat's mouth and occupying his hands. Succeeding where so many others have failed, all while keeping him deliciously entertained."

"My father truly loves Nerys," Ziyal believed. "He always has."

"If you say so," Q patted her. "Not knowing the man personally I'll have to take your word. Dare I suggest though how it also doesn't take an advanced lifeform to figure out what happens if she pledges her love to Shakaar Adon, the elder, the younger, or somewhere in between, rather than to Dukat? Hm? No, of course, it doesn't. The Bajoran is distracting her attention if he isn't managing to do too much of anything else. _Not! I repeat, not a good idea. Physically, to the discriminating eye, he's far more appealing. Morally, he's far less a degenerate. Spiritually?"_

"Spiritually?" Ziyal's face contorted.

"You're right," Q nodded, "we are talking about Dukat. If it wasn't for Major Kira's enduring passion for loving a good challenge if she loves nothing, or no one, I really don't think your father would stand too much of a chance _IF he stands one at all; which is doubtful, highly doubtful. So let's not give either of them a reason to continue to hate each other when what they need to do is acknowledge their love, difficult as that might be, understandably so. The time for you to act is now. Major Kira needs Dukat to live, not just love. Love, she can get anywhere. So, what do you say?" he dangled another of those luscious Kaferian apples for her to contemplate and enjoy. "The quicker he's out of jail. The quicker he's returned to his rightful position as Chief Military Advisor -- "_

"Maybe," Ziyal took the tasty fruit, not doubting his majesty, wisdom, or intentions, simply knowing her father very, very well. "Actually it could just be what my father needs. He takes Nerys far too much for granted, he always has, I've tried to tell him this."

"Damn!" Q stamped his foot in frustration, a risky action unto itself as the child walked away. But the planet survived without so much as a shudder. The sleeping residents slept on, all but the Human called Bashir long since awake to find himself alone in his Cardassian bedroll rather than in the company of Commander Dax.

"Jadzia?" Bashir sat up in the silent darkness with a shake of his groggy head.Groping for his tricorder he found his watch. It was still several hours until daylight.

"Yes, all right," he continued to sit there impatiently for a few minutes before he pulled on his watch and got up to pull on his clothes. Hers were gone. Boots, field jacket, everything, including his tricorder. Either in anticipation of looking for something, or with the idea of hindering him in looking for her should he waken.

"Location of Commander Dax," he activated his com badge as he stepped into the corridor.

_"Short range scans for your sector are denied in accordance with the Prime Directive," the shuttle's computer reminded. __"Direct communication among the assigned landing party is allowed."_

"Overrule," Bashir instructed with annoyance. "Medical emergency. The woman could be in danger. I'd rather not alert them, if you don't mind."

_"Please state the nature of the medical emergency for the ship's log."_

"Never mind," Bashir came to his senses, annoyance increasing as he boldly checked the assortment of rooms in the main entrance hall of the Town Center, looking for light, listening for voices, including what could possibly be Anar's quarters. The out-of-place Klingon bat'telh suspended on the far wall told him someone lived there. It was vacant however, same as the others. Silent, dark, and cold. He was outside on the steps, glancing up and down the equally desolate street, knowing she could be anywhere, the same as he knew why. It stopped him from activating his com badge to call her directly. It kept him sitting out on the landing for forty minutes or so, about frozen by the time her footsteps turned the corner of the sloping stone banister to ascend the stairs.

Dax slowed in her brisk pace immediately when she saw him.

"No, it's all right," Bashir stood up, extending his hand in encouragement, his voice quiet and calm. "Come on."

"Julian…" she said tentatively as she took his hand.

"Cold out here." His arm slipped around her waist in agreement and they walked inside.

"Yes," she smiled. "How upset are you?"

"Extremely," he admitted. "Extremely angry, actually. Confused."

"I can explain."

"For what it's worth," he agreed, taking her by her hands again when they entered their chamber, trying to keep the anger out of his voice and the tone low. "I asked you to let me take care of it. I took care of it."

"Julian, it concerns the two of us."

"No, it doesn't!" he insisted, which was not only wrong, but absurd. She didn't

have to say it was, he already knew it was. 

She didn't say it was. She just smiled softly and asked, "Why doesn't it?"

"Because I said it doesn't," he answered what shouldn't be the answer and was the answer, and it was equally absurd; his head hung.

She thought about that, tipping her head to look up under his at him. "I can't disagree?"

"Yes, you can disagree," he replied.

She thought about that while he thought about how to put into words what he was thinking; feeling, in all honesty.

"Julian…" she began to say something herself as his grip of her hands tightened and then slackened to rub her arms somewhat haphazardly.

"I am incredibly insecure around you," he explained. "Physically insecure. Not so much due to anything you say or do. It's just, having been a man in your lifetimes, all I've ever been is a man; you have to understand something of what I'm talking about. Call it a cultural difference if you truly don't, an entrenched obsession with male dominance. I can't fathom that gender issues have never been a part of Trill society. It's certainly played a rather large role in Terran. We like to say we no longer suffer from, or tolerate such nonsense, but that isn't true. Some of us still do. Some of us always will. I'm trying very hard not to. It's not your baggage it's mine. Mine to deal with, not yours. And I'm trying," he said, "I am really trying very hard to."

"You're doing wonderfully," her hand touched his cheek.

"Am I?"

"You're not afraid to talk?" she shook her head, smiling with the encouraging example.

"No, I'm not afraid to talk," he agreed. "Are you?"

"No," Dax assured.

"Good," his forehead rested against hers, his hands caressing her shoulders. "It's what a great deal of this is all about; talking."

"True," she said. "Are you still upset?"

"Yes," he said and she laughed. 

"Would it help if I told you all I did was tell him how I agreed with you?"

"How does that help?"

"Well, I don't know," she considered how it might. "Unity, perhaps? Regardless of what he thinks he said, the way he said it, what he meant, I know exactly what he meant and said and how and he knows I know…which, yes," she snuggled closer to him, "perhaps I should tell you, even though I think you know as well. Maquis. Maquis talking to the Federation. He lets it get in the way. Not you, he does. Either intentionally or out of habit. And you just didn't stand for it."

"No, of course I didn't stand for it," Bashir said. "Doesn't negate what the man was saying, however, regardless of how or why. Particularly the nonsense about Kira. The man could be dangerous. He is dangerous if he truly believes half of what he was asking; mentally unbalanced."

"Or a man," Dax nodded.

"What?"

"A man," she laughed, giggled really. He wasn't quite sure if he'd ever heard her giggle before or not. "Even when presented with the reality that there's no difference between Kira and Ziyal and he and Janice Lange or Anon and Pfrann Dukat there is, of course, still a difference."

"Oh, I see," Bashir understood what she was saying now. "Something along my classic line 'because I said so'."

"That, and she's a woman," Dax nodded. "Partisan, courtesan, victim, one or the other is not only mandatory, it's guaranteed."

"Mentally unbalanced," Bashir assured, "as I said. The more I think about it actually, I truly do think we should tell Kira; forewarn her."

"She's fine."

"We don't know that."

"She's fine," Dax promised.

Bashir huffed. "Why? Because she's 'a woman'? Taking my theory a bit far, aren't you?"

"Because she's Kira," Dax smiled with a light kiss of his lips. "I believe you mean confession. Still angry?"

"Theory. And, of course, I'm still angry. The male ego is fragile, Terran male, anyway. Certainly nothing to just run over. Run back and forth, smashing and trampling it even if all you're out there doing is saying things like my Julian can beat your Julian."

"Liar," she laughed. 

"No, I'm not lying," he said. "Certainly not about who your Julian can and cannot hope to teach a lesson. I should be glad the punch didn't come from Anon; I'm damn glad."

"Anon?"

"On behalf of Janice," he kissed her. "And my own rather rude and obvious interest in seduction, never mind the Chief."

She stared at him. "What?" he laughed.

"You conveniently left that part out."

"Of course I left it out; why?" he taunted. "Mad?"

"Devious," she nodded. "You're devious. He said you were devious, and you know what? You're devious," she assured.

"That's not all I am," his mouth connected with hers, hard, too hard. Their teeth hit, he felt his lip split, tasting the blood. The two of them momentarily froze, like they were suspended in stasis. Bashir horrified and trying not to look it. Terrified he had stirred the primitive beast lying dormant inside of her. Uncertain what she was going to do as she stared at his mouth, her fingers touching the tip of her tongue. He held his breath as she smiled, pulling her shirtsleeve down over the heel of her hand to wipe his mouth clean in the same way she had wiped the cream from his cheek.

"Definitely sanitary," Bashir relaxed into a grin.

"Hm," she kissed him. "I like your touch."

"Well, surely I like yours," he assured, punctuating his answer with a boisterous snort that even to him sounded remarkably like a grunting pig.

"No," she laughed. "I meant…I like your touch," her hands slid down his arms holding her to entwine her fingers with his. "Don't change it," she shook her head. "Don't." 

"I also think," Dax said later when they were just lying there, "Anar has serious concerns, reasonable from his perspective, in just what incorporating the Federation into their lives is going to mean. Where is it going to lead? I think he's relying very heavily on Kira's opinions, comments, or just simple dialogue. Because she's Bajoran, yes. But also because of who she is. Bajoran liaison to the Federation. A lengthy and close association with Shakaar. I wouldn't go as far as saying he's confusing that with a personal interest," she said. "Kira certainly is an attractive woman, intelligent. Strong-minded, and strong-willed. You don't have to be around her for very long to realize she's also quite confident in herself and with who she is."

"Yes, all right," Bashir agreed, "I understand all of that. Simply not what it has to do with you and I."

"Looking for flaws, perhaps?" she guessed. "Not necessarily salacious information. Chinks in the Federation armor? Something to hold up when confronted, if confronted; 'you aren't any better than I or mine, and here I have the proof'?' As far as Dukat…" Dax was thinking seriously about that.

"Blind hatred, perhaps? Transferring his own concerns over how someone might view his relationship with Dukat's sons? Looking to prove Kira as innocent as himself, possibly? Not guilty? We do look upon him as having to be guilty of something. Again that infamous 'it simply has to be'."

"How mortal you make him sound."

Dax smiled. "He is mortal. Possibly a rude awakening."

"Which, speaking of," Bashir yawned in exhaustion. His eyes closing with a smile, his arm draped across her waist, his head nestled comfortably against her chest.

"I like Anar, actually," Dax acknowledged thoughtfully as she absently stroked his hair. "He's a very smart, very capable man." She wondered if she was going to be able to effectively convey that to Benjamin without sounding like she was trying to sell the man, or trying too hard to be liberal.

"I like Elise," she said. "She's also quite capable and intelligent. Sian?" Sian was very quiet, clearly preferring to stay behind the scenes where his father claimed to be most comfortable.

"And then there's Nadya," she had to laugh with a smile for Julian asleep. The energetic, precocious little girl, adorable in her odd way was close to stealing her heart. Much in the same way she had stolen Lange's and was stealing Julian's in spite of himself. 

She went back to thinking about Benjamin and her report that was apt to sound more like a chatty letter with its opinions and observations rather than its objective facts, which were scattered, limited. The world was there. They were there. It was cold, dark, muddy, and awful. The time of year with its overcast gray skies magnifying the wretched conditions. The pungent smell of death lingering in the soggy air. An odd thought came to her. One of a group of hopeless people who were not without hope, their leader incorporating an insight with his abilities and intelligence. She felt herself drifting off to sleep and a strange dream. An image fixed in her mind of Ziyal watching her quietly from a doorway, mud on her boots. The mud and the boots were Julian's. It was morning.

  


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Are you sure that doesn't hurt?" Nadya questioned Sian lying quietly on Janice's examining table allowing Bashir to do his work.

"No, of course it doesn't hurt, child," he reassured her. 

"Different hands," Anar explained Nadya's interest to Kira.

"Yes," she just said.

"Trained hands," Bashir muttered to Dax as he verified the results of the modified marrow extract.

"What percentage of compatibility were you able to achieve?" she smiled back.

"Ninety-six percent," he agreed. "Not going to get much better than that."

"You're good," she patted his shoulder.

That explained his audience with their microscopic inspection.

"Emotional support," Dax nodded.

  


"Expected, understood, simply not en masse."

"Well…" Dax wouldn't exactly say Anar, Elise and Sian constituted en masse, especially when Sian's presence was required as well as Nadya's. Kira was simply there she supposed because Kira really didn't have anywhere else to be. "Just pretend you're demonstrating for a group of medical students," was her suggestion.

"I am," Bashir clipped the vial into place in the hypospray, removed his surgical mask and turned around to Nadya with a smile. "Ready?"

"Ready," she hopped up on the examining table with permission for her father to stay seated while she lay down. "There's plenty of room."

"So there is," Bashir agreed, wondering as he checked her arm versus her neck for the administration site, "Did you eat?"

"I'll swallow," she reminded.

"Yes. You mentioned something about that last night. Only a question. It doesn't matter."

"I can feel it," she assured.

"The hypospray?"

"The fluid. It's cold. Until it reaches the muscle. That's why Janice uses my leg. It's slower."

"Yes," Bashir said. "Rather the same as the sensation you're describing is quite common. Having to do with while the application is intravenous, it's still relatively superficial initially. It doesn't hurt, but, yes, your sensory functions are quite alert at that early level, causing you to feel the flow -- though, I suspect only momentarily. As I suspect the reason why you swallow. It can be startling, in turn causing some minor nausea. Am I right?"

"Maybe," she said.

Bashir laughed."Nevertheless, I think we'll use your arm, if that's all right. It's a little faster in reaching your lungs, from 

there those two livers of yours."

"Only one's working right," she informed him.

"True. Something else that can possibly be remedied. Not today. But, yes, something perhaps for you to think about…all right to begin?" he turned over her arm, the hypospray poised.

"Go ahead," she closed her eyes with a sigh. "But if I don't like it this way next time we're going to use my leg."

"Actually, you stand a very good chance we won't have to do this again. We'll know that within a couple of days," Bashir straightened up with a smile as she flinched under the feeling of coolness traveling up her arm, quickly changing to warmth as it seemed to spread across her chest before it dissipated. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. "But you won't know in days, it takes weeks. It always works in the beginning. You need a complete genetic mapping of me before you can begin to determine where and why the failure occurs before it becomes widespread. Janice had one but she lost it when the Klingons destroyed her shuttle."

"Easy enough to repeat," Bashir assured.

"Here?" she asked.

Bashir hesitated, only slightly. "With the proper equipment, yes. I can conduct any screening I care to with my tricorder. What I don't have are the necessary medical and science banks. But then we didn't come here to make sophisticated determinations, only to collect appropriate botanical samples."

"Are you done?"

"With the field outings? Or with your treatment? Yes, to both. Long ago."

"That was it?"

"That was it," he said.

She sat up with a nod. "Next time you'll come better prepared. You should know that even better than I. You never know what you'll find; look at me."

"Something else I don't suppose Anar should have considered mentioning," Bashir belabored his latest criticism hours later as they trudged better than a third of Lange's staggering number of samples back to the Ark.Apparently upholding this continuing idea they were going to be able to complete cataloging her study before docking at the station. A goal that continued to seem highly unlikely to him, what with less than a third of the third's gross compound even identified.

"Well…" Dax said, not about Lange's lack of organization, but Anar's failure to mention Nadya during his invitation while they were still at the station, before they left, and hence insure they came equipped to do something other than cross their fingers and wish they could do more to help.

"You said mistrust," Bashir dropped the heavy field pack off his aching shoulder.

Yes, she had said that. Anar's, as well as theirs, the Federation. She had said, or reminded, Maquis. Elaborating on what she had said several times, all of which could be capsuled very nicely under the fair presumption, "Would we have believed him?"

"Rather than suspect some sort of murderous plot to kill us and steal a fully-equipped, state-of-the-art Federation runabout," Bashir agreed. "Yes, you also said that."

"Close enough," Dax supposed to what she had said with an eye on the field pack dropped on the floor of the cargo hold while he worked on rotating his shoulder in an effort to relieve the painful muscle spasm creeping across his upper back. "Are you just going to leave that there?"

"No," Bashir returned sweetly facetious. "I'm going to pick it up and place it neatly next to yours on the counter. Treating it with all due and earned respect -- when I'm damn good and ready, I might add."

"Why," Dax wondered aloud what she had been wondering about for several hours, "do I get the idea there's more to your mood?"

"Because you're right," he took her by the hand with a cautious poke of his head through the doorway and the sight of Kira to go along with the sounds of Kira attempting to pound the life support systems back into consistent working order. "Is there a particular reason why she has to concern herself now? Tonight? In the middle of the night, for God's sake?

"Is there a particular reason why," he chanced pulling her into their cabin, pulling off his jacket and T-shirt and tossing them aside, "the man just doesn't seduce her, making his life happier, and mine certainly as well?"

"It's not the middle of the night."

"Close enough."

"And…" Dax smiled, "last night you were complaining why Kira hadn't taken the time to work on the systems."

"Two nights ago," he took her in his arms. "Last night I was complaining about the freezing cold and the smell of the Cardassian bedroll."

"Because you like complaining," she said. "As far as seduction, I believe it takes two."

"So it does," he kissed her. "Rather the same as I suspect we stand about a fifty percent chance of agreeing there's no difference tonight opposed to last night, no greater risk to enjoying each other's company."

"Oh, there's a difference," Dax assured.

"Less room and about three feet difference in the thickness of the walls," Bashir nodded. "In the meantime these are our assigned quarters. We are assigned to these quarters. Have been always assigned to these quarters -- together, you might recall. The same as I distinctly recall asking you the first night, never mind any other, what you thought, how you felt about risking discovery, minimal as I maintain that risk is. Apparently that's changed, or you've changed your mind. We can sleep together, provided we don't sleep together. That makes sense to me, anticipated it, actually. Though I admit I didn't expect any change in what was fine, suddenly not being fine, until we were en route to the _Defiant -- where, no doubt, regardless of what was fine, or not fine before, is definitely not fine once aboard."_

"No, it isn't," she shook her head.

"Of course not," he said. "Though there we're capable of being decks apart from anyone, not mere feet. Quite all right. Saves my wondering, as I said, if we'll be sharing quarters, or when that sharing is bound and obligated to end."

"Tonight?" she proposed only half-joking with her smile on her face.

Bashir eyed her. "Due to Kira or my ragging?"

"I would say more the latter." 

"Why?" he smiled. "Also told you come the end of the week however good I'd been or attempted to be it was all going to fall to pieces."

"It's not the end of the week."

"Close enough for my liking," he pulled her close; she let him, his breath and whisper in her ear. "Suppose I could rephrase some of what I've just said…"

"You might want to consider that."

"Wouldn't be near as honest," he assured, his eyes closing in frustration with the sound of her com badge and Kira's aggravated request for assistance. "Time nevertheless to think about it."

"A little while, anyway," Dax left to find Kira under the shuttle, deep in mud and the heart of the engineering compartment.

"I'm better with Cardassian technology," Kira offered annoyed. "Admit it. I'm better with Cardassian."

Admit? Agree perhaps, sympathetically. "Especially when the Federation's is twenty years too old."

"You got it," Kira said.

Dax smiled. "So's Anar apparently a little lost, interestingly enough -- "

"No, I wouldn't let him touch life support," Kira shook her head.

"Understandable at the time," Dax supposed. "Not to say Julian and I didn't try to lend a hand the other night, probably making matters worse -- something to do with a choice between suffocating or freezing to death," she laughed at Kira's horrified expression. "We settled for leaving the cargo hatch open. Finding air, even cold air, the better of the two."

"Well, that's fine while we're here," Kira agreed.

"But not if we plan on lifting off," Dax understood. "When are we planning to rendezvous with the _Defiant? Is that all right to ask?"_

"Two days out."

"If we can get it to warp," Dax nodded, seeming to remember they had some minor difficulty with that also.

"I'll settle for one," Kira disappeared altogether, hoisting herself into the compartment.

"Maybe three days out then," Dax calculated time needed versus distance traveled at only warp one, versus how long past the scheduled rendezvous Worf would be inclined to wait; not very. "Where do we start?" she wormed her way across the cramped internal underbelly of the shuttle to joined Kira lying on her back, a neat row of isolinear chips lined up next to her. "Are you sure it's not the unit rather than a faulty chip?"

"Don't even think that."

But she was. More than about the possibility of Worf having to secure them from the planet surface. "How did they transport 2,000 bodies ten miles to the grotto… More than 2,000 if you start to count Klingons," she said to Kira peering at her. "How many more; a few at least, I would imagine."

"They didn't," Kira said flatly. "The bodies buried in the grotto -- "

"Are Klingon," Dax interrupted as several of her questions came together in a plausible answer. "Away from the settlement, and probably only the handful or so who escaped being tossed in the pit; Lange objected apparently."

"Probably," Kira said.

"Where are the Bajoran graves?" Dax asked curiously.

"The fields," was Kira's guess. "The vineyard. I don't know. It's really just -- "

"Supposition," Dax smiled. "It's a good one; so's mine. I don't care if it's 2,000 or twenty transported. Those who survived were largely injured, shortly thereafter dead or dying from their injuries and some mysterious plague; quite possibly presumed to have been brought by the Klingons. They had little time and less strength to move any suspected contamination ten miles from the town."

"They had transporter ability," Kira shrugged.

"For a period of time after the Klingon attack," Dax agreed. "It's very possible they still do whether or not they have the power supply to run it; I say they don't. They do have a sophisticated holographic system somewhere supporting a projection of thirty Bajorans -- they were short five; six, counting you, on Julian's tricorder," she disclosed, "if their implants are deactivated. If they're not, there were twenty-nine too many."

"The mines," Kira said.

"I keep forgetting that rule," Dax admitted. "'What do you think I would do?'"

"That's not the only one you forgot," Kira assured. "We agreed to no scans."

"Curiosity as to our visitor," Dax apologized. "Annoyance; or I was annoyed. Julian was convinced I was imagining things. I wasn't. But it's all right. Maybe, just maybe, Anar can stumble upon a working Federation thermal unit somewhere in his eclectic graveyard?"

"No questions asked?" Kira verified after some time.

"Not by me," Dax swore. "The Chief's bound to have something to say."

"What's he care?" Kira insisted.

"When it has to be better, if not a lot newer than this one," Dax laughed. "You're right."

"Yes, I'm right," Kira glared at the thermal core they were probably going to have to remove regardless of how much they didn't want to. "In the meantime…"

"It would be nice if we could get this one operating, at least for the night," Dax said.

"Yes, it would be," Kira assured, tired of being cold, wet; it was all too familiar. Far too keenly familiar, the sensation of déjà vu continuing to haunt her.

Bashir joined them about ten minutes later, attempting to add strength to the leverage none of them had, making it an extremely tight squeeze and putting them generally in each other's way; his point. "Wouldn't it make more sense to raise her to a hover?"

"Are you going to trust it?" Kira countered.

"Point," he said. "Yes, all right. Wait a minute…" Twenty minutes later he was wiggling his way back down between the crushing weight of a conduit holding the believed offending component roughly the length and size of one of his arms, and definitely far less impressive looking than all the trouble it was causing.

"Regulating unit," Dax identified.

"Yes," he accepted. "Of course when you said thermal core, I'm thinking thermal _core…" and apart from whether or not Anar had a dozen spare never-used cores in his inventory he was not going to be the one to attempt to lift and carry it anywhere._

"No, it's not the core," Kira slammed what regulated the core down on the commissary island and set to work.

"We would be issuing a distress signal to the _Defiant," Dax nodded._

"If it were," Bashir agreed, "rather than bothering with this. Still may end up issuing one if Anar can't or won't come through, my question. Why bother since it's likely he does, as likely will produce…particularly if someone bats her eyes and prefaces her request with a beguiling _please," he grinned at Kira hardly amused. "Point being, is there a reason why we can't ask before we herniate ourselves reinstalling what's only going to have to be removed?"_

"You're right," Dax agreed with Kira. "It's more obnoxious when he's right."

"Of course I'm right," Bashir replicated himself a cup of coffee, which should work wonders in keeping him up all night should the bitter cold followed by periods of searing heat once again prove insufficient.

"Yes, we can ask," Kira kept her attitude, climbed down off her one-legged stool and aimed for the communications console, the thermal unit in hand.

"Perchance he isn't quite sure what one is?" Bashir surmised.

"Or at least considers she's serious," Dax said.

"Ah," Bashir believed he grasped what she was saying. "Rather than unwilling to openly admit she finds him as fascinating as he finds her…Of course," he grinned, "if he had the brains to match his arrogance, it might occur to him, however awkward she might feel in confronting her attraction, covering herself in gray slop and disemboweling the shuttle just to have an excuse to talk to him really is a touch extreme."

"We're talking about a man," Dax took his coffee away from him before he kept himself awake all night and her as well.

The man on the viewer screen on the other hand, Anar, while he also had a mug in his hand when he answered Kira's hail, it was probably tea. The same as while he might have been startled to see Kira looking the sight she looked, clutching what she appeared to be clutching, he covered whatever surprise he had or felt fairly nicely and quickly. Not that she gave him much of a chance to say or do anything else.

"I need a thermal regulator," she announced leaving equally little room for him to deny he had one, or request she elaborate on a suitable model number.

Smooth, no fool, he attempted neither. "Yes, I have one."

"Thank you," Kira said.

"Anything else?" he asked, secretly suspecting there was a dual purpose to her call. To accuse him of sabotaging the life support system, while it might be crossing his mind, he was dismissing it.

"No," Kira said.

"As you wish," he toasted her with his coffee, tea, whatever it was, severing the hail before she did. Dax's jaw literally slackened, Julian gnawing on the back of his hand trying not to laugh aloud behind her.

"I'll be…" Kira just waved in the direction of the two of them, secured Bashir's coffee for herself, kept the regulator unit and headed back out for the underbelly of the shuttle where she could work in peace and quiet. Whether it was muddy, whether it was cold, she was already muddy; inside it was equally cold.

"She doesn't know what she's missing," Julian cracked in her ear.

"He apparently thinks so," Dax agreed, wondering if Bashir was rocking and bending in mirth, because he was cold, or because he needed the toilet.

"No, wait a minute," he caught her hand before she followed Kira.

"Shouldn't you be complaining to the UFP about the modifications to the access crawlway?" Dax asked.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, no.I know why they modified the crawlway; the warp engines."

"Would you prefer impulse power?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No," she decided.

He smiled. "Can if you insist. Yes, I'd prefer impulse power. I'd prefer ending up being stranded here for the rest of our lives, regardless of the hellhole it is."

"Speaking of extremes," she scratched at the drying mud clinging to his jumpsuit.

"Just a touch," he tipped her chin up, her eyes watching his. "What if I just say I love you? Because to me that says everything.If not, the only other thing I can say is as quickly as I have become used to you just being there, it isn't going to be a habit as easy to break."

"We're slated to meet the _Defiant two days out."_

He gave up trying to guess if she was talking about something to do with the engines, or what she was talking about. "What does that mean?"

"It's nowhere near the end of the week?"

"Darling!" he grabbed her, tripping over her feet, or her tripping over his, it didn't matter.

"Julian…" she said.

"Yes, I know," he gasped in between his determined kisses. "You like my touch, don't change it. Except I rather suspect this is my touch…" When he was feeling anxious, desperate, excited, in particular all three. The sharp edge of the island gouging into the back of his hand as she kept her balance against his weight pressing her backwards really meant nothing; her com badge sounded.

"Actually that's what I meant," Dax laughed as he stared at the communicator and Kira's order for assistance or company. Whichever it was she really wanted or needed.

"Damn!" Bashir said, inviting himself along even though he hadn't been asked.

One step through the hatch of the shuttle however neither of them were likely going to prove wanted or necessary. The spiraling swirl of colorful light greeting them was not a transport signature Dax recognized. The figure emerging she did; Anar. Dressed for work, not play. Holding the precisely wrong model of what was probably not a Federation thermal regulation unit, suggesting he either knew what he was doing or he didn't, so why waste commenting?

She didn't. "Why walk?" she mentioned instead.

"Especially in this weather," Anar agreed, unzipping his jacket in anticipation of a tight fit.

"It's raining," Dax explained to Bashir just in case he was wondering why his head was wet.

"Yes," Bashir said, fascinated. "Shocking."

"You missed your calling, Doctor," Anar admitted with a gesture for the underside of the Ark. "Kira?"

"Access crawlway," Dax nodded.

"Modified access crawlway," Bashir hastened to add. "You may want to -- " Dax's hand clapped over his mouth.

"That not only makes sense, Doctor," Anar had already disappeared except for his voice and dry, parting shot, "I am aware."

"Lose more than the jacket and slather on a little mud," Bashir removed Dax's hand with a slick and oily grin. "Unnecessary, you're right. For some reason I suspect our Mister Anar can slither his way through most anything despite his manly size."

"Manly?" Dax verified, but only because while she could borrow his T-shirts and jacket, she shared Anar's height and weight.

"Well, yes, when describing him," Bashir kissed her. "Luscious when talking about you."

Dax smiled. "He's aware of the crawlway because Kira allowed him to assist Rom with the engines. She just wouldn't let him have anything to do with the life support systems."

"Solid waste disposal," Bashir agreed. "And, no, I don't want to know about it either. I'd much rather just go about my business and not worry that I'm taking my life in my hands every time I answer a call of Nature."

"Coward!" she laughed at him and the twisted, sick image that sprang to mind.

"Absolutely," he encouraged her back inside where it may not yet be warm but it was dry. 

"Well," Dax supposed they would only be in the way.

"Definitely," he kissed her.

"And," she smiled, "there's my report for Benjamin."

"Oh, yes," he said, "and a hundred or so samples I can't wait to catalogue."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Anar tossed his jacket up into the hole, lifting himself up after it into Bashir's modified crawlway better described as bastardized.

"I can't…" Kira started to say she either couldn't do it alone, couldn't get the unit to work, hearing the metal of the jacket strike the alloy floor and stopped with "I can't" when she realized the low slung figure swiveling its way toward her wasn't Dax. 

She eyed the Cardassian modulator cradled in Anar's arms like a rifle. "I can't use that," she picked up where she left off.

"It'll work," Anar promised.

"No, it won't!" she snapped.

"We'll make it work."

"Fine," she flung her regulator at him; he caught it. "Make it work."

"Faith never hurts," he smiled, pulling his jacket forward to collect his tools.

  


"Faith," Kira snorted. "That's not a Federation regulator module."

"But it is compatible," Anar patiently worked at integrating the circuitry for several minutes following a brief inspection that had him concluding it would be simpler to use the Federation housing rather than attempt to modify Anon's for a secure and stable fit.

Kira watched him. Tiring as the time passed, growing annoyed when he didn't fluster over the tedious project, angry when he tested the integrity of the chips and they held. The regulator refusing to seize and explode into frozen crystallized shards. "Do you even have a Federation regulator module?" she stuffed her face in his just in case he had forgotten her in his concentration, along with misunderstanding why and what she was most angry about.

"Not one I would trust in this instance, no," Anar agreed. "This unimpressive hulking piece of trash is as heavy as she is old. Sisko surprises me that he would be far more concerned with protecting Federation technology than the lives of his staff."

"No!" Kira said. "And that's not all you lied about!"

"The transporter," Anar replied. "If you speak with Commander Dax I am certain she will reassure you it's not the technology we lack, but the power resources. This has occurred to her recently…since coming to realize the world we inhabit is not living, but long dead." He eyed the narrow squeeze between the air conduit and increasing heat of the system's thermal core in danger of overheating and then, yes, they would be stranded until the _Defiant could secure them. He just might have to call Bashir to thread his slender frame up to reaching the exposed control panel. But then what to do even with explicit instructions, Anar highly doubted if the doctor knew despite his enhanced intelligence. It wasn't someone's body, after all. Merely a large and unattractive collection of wires and aging isolinear chips requiring logic, not art._

"What are you doing?" Kira demanded as he grasped the steel conduit as if it were a rope, trusting it to hold his weight or not; it held.

Anar pulled himself up the necessary few feet, the tips of his fingers quickly bleeding from the strain of digging into the merciless coil too thick to wrap in his hands. The thermal core was hot under the soles of his boots when his feet touched it. Using the power and strength of his legs to force the coil back, he was braced securely between the two, but for the coil supporting his back, his feet propped against the master unit, suspended in midair, the control panel well within reach, directly in front of him. It was a position he believed he could hold comfortably for twenty minutes or so before his legs began to tire. He doubted if he needed anywhere near that much time.

"Accomplishing our objective?" he saved his answer for Kira until that point. "Please," he requested she hand him the regulator he had left behind.

She slapped it in his hand. He nodded, beginning the last of the necessary adjustments to the master circuits before reinstalling the unit. "Curiosity only," he prefaced his question, "am I too like him or not enough that irritates you more?"

"You're nothing like him," she spit; he could hear the saliva wetting her lips.

"Adon," he presumed since it had already been established he was so like Dukat as to make her sick. "Only in the face," he took a moment to smile down on her. "You're right. A similar affliction, some might say, Pfrann shares with his father."

She was silent before she muttered something under her breath. He heard it, understood the words but said "What?" anyway.

"I said!" she said with venom. "I happen to like Pfrann!"

It was Anon she loathed. For no reason other than the mass, the power, the size of him. The advanced age of young adult that had him incapable of being swayed without good reason. Anar could say it had him questioning her ability in making good judgment in people but that would be untrue and unfair to Pfrann.

"So do I," he assured. "At seventeen. Believing, trusting, knowing, with Anon's direction and guidance I will like him at fifty-seven. Whatever your beliefs and perceptions of Anon, they are wrong. He is not his father, no more than Dukat could ever hope or be his son."

"Uh, huh," she sneered."So he would like to think."

The expression with its contempt was Federation, reminiscent of O'Brien, adopted by the Ferengi Quark. The subject of her statement simply unclear. He was down from his perch, sitting on the floor, no longer walking on air.

"What?" Kira said.

His head tipped. "It's words like those that have me confused. I cannot tell if you are condemning or defending him."

"Who?" she insisted.

"Dukat," he said. "Prefect Dukat. A concern and wonder I haven't mentioned since you requested I not. I am though asking you now. So who would like to think what? Anon that he is not his father? Or Anon that he could ever be his father?"

"You don't have to mention it," she assured.

He stared at her. Uncertain if he was angry that she refused to answer his question or that she refused to hear it. "Nerys," he said sternly, "that's not what I asked you."

"Don't tell me what you asked!" she had his laser in his face, the knife he had used to slice the modulator open rather than waste time prying its locked seal loose.

"And don't!" she held him off from any personal advance he might be considering. "Even think about it! Why would I ever defend Dukat? Why would you ever think I would ever defend Dukat?"

"I don't know," he reached to move the threatening laser from in front of his face. She knocked his hand aside so he grabbed her wrist and took the knife. The force she pulled away from him with had her twisting backwards. Crouched, as he was, in an area where the two of them could barely fit, she fell over. He heard the crack as the back of her skull struck the base of the cooling thermal core. Saw the grimace of pain on her face as she grabbed her head, struggling like a toppled turtle to sit up.

"Don't touch me!" she warned him before he tried, before he asked, activating her com badge to holler for Bashir.

It was an inopportune call, rousing Bashir from the throes and deep passions of making love. Threatening him with reality at a point when no one cared about reality, topped off by the Chief's voice running through his subconscious mind, rambling something about if you weren't doing what you shouldn't be doing you wouldn't have cause to complain, paying money and taking chances.

Taking chances here was taking chances on being interrupted with what was an interruption regardless if the drawn lines between professional, personal, timing, opportunity, behavior, conduct, were blurred; they were blurred. Distorted, out of control, any viewing audience of reasonable intelligence would be shocked, concurring with the Chief, and perhaps they knew better than he, because he didn't know at all. Uncertain if he ever knew where the lines belonged drawn. When professional, duty, responsibility, became personal life and hence no one's business but one's own. At what point. With whom. What time. Where. 

Chances were it wasn't there. Still, in the face of the rude awakening of reality, reality was he was no worse or more out of control than Dax. Who was no worse or more out of control than Kira, or Anar, and so on down the line. They were all crazy, having gone insane. Priorities confused with emotions. Perhaps it had something to do with the water or something in the air.

Bashir's senses cleared. Not completely, but well enough to know his shirt was calling him and the voice was Kira's, angry and impatient.

"I don't believe it." His voice was hoarse. His breathing breathless and labored, the back of his head drilling into the bed when he answered what he maintained was an interruption. The third one. What hadn't been the middle of the night before, was the middle of the night now, somewhere around 0300 or zero-four.

"Believe it," Dax kissed him, her voice husky. Her eyes sensual and dreamy. She looked intoxicated. Her movements, mood, almost serpentine, distinctly not Human if Bashir thought about it too long or too hard, which he didn't care to. What was exotic ran a considerable risk of quickly becoming unnerving at this early point in their relationship. Consumed, fairly obsessing about her and being with her, he was capable of being jarred awake from his involved trance-like state which she was not. Instead, she was impervious. Questionable to what extent she was even aware of other sights or sounds around her once induced. Her mood requiring time to wear off. 

It was another one of those fascinating, frustrating contradictions that seemed to rule her. Each in their own way probably contributing to why he fell in love with her in the first place. He preferred to keep it fascinating. Believing he was in love with her and she with him. The two of them finding each other hypnotic and intoxicating, enticing and exciting, not finding themselves suffering from some bizarre addiction to the immense pleasure of giving and receiving physical pleasure, ignoring the expected subconscious vandals promoting nagging fears and insecurities from the usual to the absurd.

A cliché almost whenever broaching issues of morality and love. Both too easily becoming twisted to morality versus love, commingled, interchangeable, synonymous somehow with race, culture, and hence bigotry, fear, fanaticism. Making love to another man's wife, or making love to seven different people. Some of them men, some of them women, all of them housed within the body of a worm, nestled in the body of a woman. If he didn't believe he was making love to the woman he was in love with the puritanical ancestors of his culture would require he'd vomit otherwise.

In the meantime he had more than enough to occupy his senses reaching heights of maddened, desire-driven desperation dealing with the frustrating aspect of her lingering at being far less easy to ignite than he was, requiring a continuing degree of cajoling. Her cool clear senses prevailing until she gave in to him talking her into bed where she underwent a transformation from Commander Dax to Jadzia.

When, exactly, Bashir really didn't have any idea. But then he was usually blind and largely incoherent by that time. Nevertheless, far preferring to glide back into reality in tune and in time with her, however long that took. Not be rudely awakened by an alarm ringing in his ear especially when he heard it and she didn't and therefore she stood this enormous chance of frightening him to death until he grew accustomed to her. The surreal aspect of her. The differences between her and him that he loved and wanted to keep right on loving.

His senses were obviously not as clear as he thought they were. The alarm ringing was Kira that Jadzia heard the same as he did. He wasn't startled and frightened to find her draped over him with her half-closed eyes. He knew she was there, he wanted her there, and he was annoyed about having to get up.

Or move. He moved. He didn't get up. Not all the way. He started with his arm, sort of flailing it around out in midair somewhere until he realized that wasn't going to work if he couldn't even find the floor which annoyed him even more.

"Excuse me," he grudgingly pardoned his way out from under Dax to sit up and lean over to find the floor, his jacket and com badge and answer Kira screaming for him practically by that time in searing hysteria.

"Yes?" he answered. His voice sounding groggy and half-asleep, not consumed by passion or guilt over having been caught, or at least interrupted, in the middle of a compromising position.

That was Anar's observation of the doctor's response. Whose otherwise knowing smirk Bashir couldn't see, nor hear, if there was anything to hear above Kira bellowing _"I said don't touch me! I know it's bleeding! It's fine!"_

Bashir looked back over his shoulder at Dax sitting up waiting patiently for him. He looked back at his com badge. His senses apparently not the only ones garbled and confused. "What's bleeding?" he inquired, but only because he was a doctor, not because he was particularly interested.

Neither was Kira interested. _Bashir rather than __Dax came out of her mouth when she hit her com badge because bang head, feel pain, see blood, equaled hurt, medical, call doctor. It was simply a matter of association __not what was on her mind. The thermal control unit was on her mind. The life support systems. The temperature._

_"Do __you have heat?" she insisted what she would have insisted of Dax._

Did they have heat. Bashir didn't know. It was a difficult question to answer in the middle of the night especially when he felt hot. In the meantime he also felt wet and that didn't necessarily mean they had water. "Do we have heat?" he asked Dax.

She looked around. Either trying to figure it out for herself or trying to figure out what he was talking about. "I think so," she answered tentatively. The cabin seemed hot. The air felt hot. However being she concluded her observation with a stroke of her hand down his perspiring back and a kiss of his shoulder when she leaned over, he was forced to conclude that alert as she didn't look she probably wasn't. Whereas alert as he didn't sound he possibly was.

Kira remained simply out there, bleeding for some reason and barking about the temperature when she wasn't barking _"Bashir!"_

"Wait a minute," Bashir surrendered to getting up, finding himself in a stagger that he straightened out of with a shake of his head to find his trousers, T-shirt, and com badge that he clipped to his waistband. The door to the cabin opened to the corridor where it was much colder. He stood there for a few moments attempting to decide if they had heat or simply stifling close quarters. Or no heat or simply an open hatch.

"I believe we have heat, yes," he notified Kira, overlapping her _"Bashir!"_

"Yes, I'm here," he said. "What's bleeding, by the way?"

_"My head!" _

"Badly?"

_"No!"_

Bashir nodded and went back to bed. Trousers, T-shirt and com badge. He pulled Dax back up to him as he laid down.

"What?" she smiled, her fingers running lightly through his hair, pushing it off his forehead.

"I love you," he kissed her, consciously aware while it was not the end of the week, at some point it was going to be the end of the week, Worf waiting in the background. He was not going to be any good at this at all. He knew that already.

Dax had an idea that might be true. Kira would leave for the township when Bashir and she did, some several hours later. Anar had apparently walked or transported home immediately after stabilizing the temperature controls. Kira claimed not to know which when Dax spoke with her in the morning, having Dax suspect Anar either walked using the time to think, or transported thinking at home. About what? 

Well…Dax's objective observation of Kira, a woman she knew as well as Julian, inspired her to want to chance suggesting to Anar regardless of what he might be thinking, had he considered a different approach? By this time, like Julian, who was offended by everything, it was hard to deny Kira was very much offended by Anar even if she wasn't feeling any particular animosity toward the colony or its inhabitants, which Dax had an idea Kira wasn't. The roots of her annoyance, frustration, anger were probably found in that it was an all too familiar scene, with Kira as probably blaming the Cardassian Occupation despite the few facts they had that clearly implicated the Klingons this time around. The mines waiting in the distance were just too many and too ominous for Kira to ignore. Anar hadn't found a dead world, he had found an enslaved one now dead. Whatever species lay claim as the planet's original inhabitants, Bajorans at some point in history had settled there, evident by this town and probably several others dotting the continent, Dax surmised. Quite possibly, more brought there, and then what? Massacred upon the Cardassian withdrawal at the end of the occupation? Probably. Anon Dukat was following a known path eight months ago when confronted by the Klingons, of that Dax remained convinced. He wasn't lost. Discounting anything else, young Gul Dukat simply didn't seem the type.

Anar's obvious and ardent embrace of Anon who was as obviously Cardassian and Dukat, which Anon was by name and his embrace of the power of the name even if he didn't embrace his father's interpretation of what it meant to be Dukat, was interesting unto itself. Particularly so because of the three of them the two Anar needed, Julian for the fact he was a doctor, Kira for her connections to the Federation and Bajor otherwise known as Benjamin and Shakaar, were the two he persisted in agitating.

_I wouldn't say subtly as much as I would say quietly. Dax wrote in her journal for Benjamin, which was what her report was. A journal. A letter. Trying hard for it not to be she decided to just let it be what it was, lacking only the salutation __Dear Benjamin. She chose the long, tedious method of actually etching her words by hand rather than the standard spoken log, understanding what Jake, Benjamin's son, meant when he said there was just something about the pen touching the paper, or in this case, the magnetic face of the padd. Watching the words stain the log with the personal touch of her own handwriting, hoping to impress upon Benjamin the nature of the experience, the world. The slowness and privacy of the writing allowing her to formulate her thinking as she wrote what she was thinking, her suppositions, observations, quietly in the background of Julian arguing with Kira about returning to the township to retrieve Lange's inventory and that was all. Countering Kira's stubborn no with a ludicrous claim of not minding four round trips, or however many might be necessary to gather the studies, limited data, and return to the shuttle where he could work in peace and quiet for the next two days._

Julian had his points. If he were telling the truth beyond finding Kira's presence largely a personal nuisance, Dax just might possibly have believed him alongside knowing Kira was as obsessed with just being contrary as he was; Benjamin's main reason for including her, she knew. Julian and Kira's responses and outlook were commonly and typically emotional, as was the Chief's. Railing against what they didn't like, they were not Benjamin's peacekeepers it was probably easiest to put it that way. 

She, like Worf, and in general, Odo, were the opposite. Calm. An abiding sensitivity to all and others that maintained they remain calm and objective and fair as possible in the face of whoever or the heart of whatever public display. In the meantime, Worf wasn't there. Nor Odo, nor the Chief. It was just Julian, Kira, and her. Jadzia Dax the diplomat. Jadzia Dax the arbitrator stationed between the two giants-in-their-own-right positioned to either side of her and sure to clash over something. Other than that she was extraneous. Someone to assist Kira with the security and safety of the landing party, someone to assist Bashir with his cataloging. An extra pair of hands to help collect, carry, tote, and lug the samples, Lange's inventory, if in existence, Benjamin probably expected something to be there.

Dax continued to wish he were here. She looked up from her journal for Kira and Bashir with a smile. "It makes more sense to catalog what we can there." 

It was the diplomat Dax speaking, agreeing with Kira, although she knew Kira was simply disagreeing with Bashir. Not with the idea of taking the samples and working anywhere but Lange's laboratory was separating the Federation from the township and hence the Maquis. Drawing a line at a time when they were supposed to be entertaining the idea of erasing one, employing the fine art of looking the other way, here, anyway.With this surviving group. Whose leader, town elder, just by sheer coincidence happened to bear the name Shakaar.

Benjamin would probably prefer to think that reality played a very small role to his agreeing to even sending them there, beyond the concern for the national security of Bajor and Shakaar once the quadrant was confronted with his uncle's exploits.

In reality it probably played less of a role than it would have with others, and more of a role with Benjamin than he would care to admit, but then either way Benjamin was no fool.

Julian's retorting "What?" by contrast was nasty, not even simply insisting or challenging. Dax looked at him.

"Fine," he added abruptly and was gone, through the hatch and heading for the town leaving Dax to look at Kira looking back at her.

"His priorities are confused?" Dax offered what was true, just not sure if she would be able to define what she meant and which priorities to Kira's satisfaction if asked to elaborate.

She wasn't asked. Kira was satisfied to have simply won the argument with or without Dax's deciding vote. "And how," Kira supported and was gone. Through the hatch, quickly on Bashir's heels, sparking a new argument that consisted mainly of her touting the wisdom of Dax's words and Bashir as empathic in not caring if Kira enticed the galaxy into agreeing with her, he was still right, and Kira was still wrong.

Dax looked at her letter to Benjamin, wanting to digress and write something along the lines of _speaking of Julian. Who was Human like Benjamin was Human and therefore Benjamin was probably qualified in either supporting or explaining what Julian had identified as the fragility of the Human male libido. An idea she believed she understood without fully understanding the historical or psychological details behind the premise. Just simply puzzled as far as how to avoid trampling the intangible erratic sexual-based energy of which Julian seemed to incorporate more than a balanced share in his psyche, before it announced she was stepping on it, which was what she was doing, or had done, again._

She had certainly done something again. Julian's words were nasty, his eyes accusatory when he had turned away from her to exit, his libido bruised and bleeding. She had chosen Kira over him, she understood that much, as much as she understood he was wrong. She hadn't chosen Kira. Merely refused to join him in crossing her fingers that Kira's impatience would rise long before completing four round trips to the town and back to the shuttle and she would decide to remain in the town regardless of what they did, through the night.

Whereupon if they remained at the town throughout the day, eating the common evening meal with the residents, chances were Kira would have tired of Anar long before that time, looking forward to returning to the shuttle where she would remain, as they remained, through the night.

The key to Julian's frustrations could be found in the phrase _through the night where Kira's presence made him uncomfortable enough to complain about it and want to manipulate his way around it, though not uncomfortable enough to sleep in their assigned bunks rather than together. Julian's logic was as convoluted as his moods and personality. If Dax thought about it too long she'd have a headache rather than a feeling of sympathy for how he gave every indication of being the Human male libido not simply incorporating it in his psyche. She settled for finishing her thoughts on Anar's embrace of Anon and his hesitancy in embracing the Federation and Bajor Prime. Twenty minutes later she set her journal aside, her long legs and easy stroll eventually catching up with Julian and Kira still spitting back and forth._

  


CHAPTER NINETEEN

Julian's face was tight and red with aggravation, redder and tighter and almost embarrassed when he caught sight of her.

He looked away, ending his participation in the debate with Kira. "Yes, well, there really is no point in discussing it any further." Uncomfortable with the thought Dax could read him so easily and clearly. She could. It crossed her mind how perhaps he might want to exert a little effort in learning to read and understand her? She was not maliciously or intentionally usurping him or flaunting her will over his, discounting his feelings or him, or whatever it was he thought she was doing. She maintained his priorities and thinking were confused, during the daylight hours anyway, however clear and straightforward he submitted to being come night.

Other than that, when it came to a variety of specific issues and the colony she simply held a different opinion than him. Ones that she wanted to pursue discussing freely with Kira since the only two arenas available to her in discussing them with him were during an alternating exchange of arguing and soothing his injured ego, or between his kisses in bed. She was free of such pressures with Kira…or generally free.

"Yes!" Kira's sharp nod greeted Dax, once again satisfied to have emerged victorious upon Julian's relenting. 

"Maybe I should just bang the two of you together," Dax smiled back. "Or at least your heads," she clarified when they both looked at her. "Sorry. But asking me to be a babysitter really is a bit much."

"Huh?" Kira said.

"Yes, well, if you're going to bang anyone's head," Bashir further added to that before falling into a muttering silence under her leveling look. "Yes, all right, fine."

"Thank you," Dax said. 

It was a pleasant, though quiet two-hour walk from that point; it was a reasonably quiet day. They worked in Lange's lab cataloging several samples before packing up this latest group for transportation back to the shuttle. Julian found Anar's cooperation in requesting permission to examine the pregnant twenty-six year comfort woman whose name was Noya, again no family identity revealed. Noya was fine. Healthy and cooperative, friendly as two evenings before. Bashir found her "charming" opposed to Dax who decided she couldn't stand her anymore than Elise could. Kira was off for the second of a half a dozen or so encounters with Anar disguised as discussions and town council meetings, the last of which Bashir and Dax were invited to attend before dinner and before returning to the shuttle.

What Town Council Anar neglected to explain though the Town Council of three days ago had consisted of the town less the attendance of the two minor children, Nadya and her infant brother San.

A mistake Anar acknowledged to Kira earlier in the presence of Bashir and Dax, the cause behind Nadya's feelings of separation and subsequent boredom that had led to her investigating the Federation for herself.

He proposed this with a straight face, Kira answering without emotion, "Makes sense."

The two of them oblivious to Bashir's agog expression quickly followed by his clipped retort to Dax not failing to notice him, "Yes, I know. Mind my own business."

"It does make sense," she said. "If you think about it."

He didn't want to think about it anymore than he wanted to attend the council meeting, but he did. The newly conveyed entity consisting of Nadya, her mother Elise, Anar and four of the colony's male members. One of them the father to Noya's child destined to be birthed five months from then, and on a darker note, one of the surviving amputees from the Klingon attack, the dangling short stump of his left arm shrunken in comparison to the intimidating muscles of his right. A notice the Bajoran was quick to address with how he was in no more of a particular hurry to accept a prosthesis from the Federation or Shakaar as he had been in a hurry to surrender to a Klingon bat'telh that missed his ear and took his arm. After that they all went to dinner.

By 2400 surface time they walked into the shuttle's cargo hold to set their field packs neatly down next to the others. It was not an arrangement to Bashir's liking anymore than any other. He labored over rearranging the samples for an hour or more, confusing himself long before that time between what had been catalogued and what hadn't.

A difficulty he put to and pointed out due to Dax and Kira's chronic inattention throughout the day, aggravated by their incessantly long and frequent coffee and/or tea breaks. Distracting as the one that engaged their attention now, fairly continuing to ignore him as they sat down on the floor, their legs and respective line of cups stretched out in front of them. He retired to the peace and quiet of the cabin by 2530 in sheer desperation to get some work done. Dax let him go, continuing to want to pursue sharing her opinions and observations with Kira, her lengthy monologue that touched on just about everything she had written to Benjamin thus far, ending several minutes later.

"And?" Kira said.

"And…" Dax agreed after a moment, followed by a smile, "that's what I think."

Kira nodded, got up and retired to her cabin, leaving Dax sitting, drinking her tea.

"And…I think I have it," Dax nodded eventually, understanding what she already knew. Benjamin was there. Through her, he was there. Their field study as much a scouting party. She, Benjamin's eyes, his ears, his recorder, and his reporter. It was just another reason why Benjamin had included her, in return expecting a report.

She could see him listening attentively as always to Kira's brief, bottom-line account, requesting politely, usually at the end, "If you could please explain, Major, what you mean when you say it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"Explain what?" Kira would as usual reply. At which point Sisko would turn to Dax and her record for the answers to the questions that Kira found unnecessary to be asked or addressed. He should understand it all by now by instinct the way she did. He didn't, couldn't; however, with Dax's assistance and clarification he might realize he understood more than he thought. Finding Dax's revelations and impressions insightful rather than a reiteration of what Kira, being Bajoran, already knew.

"Such as the already discussed probable location of the Bajoran graves opposed to the Klingon?" Dax spoke aloud though she was speaking to herself."The convenience of the Cardassian mines to house the remnants of much more than simply Cardassian technology?" To the plausible explanation behind Anar's trepidation with the Federation put alongside his embrace of Anon Dukat.

_"What do you think I would have done?" Kira's stock answer was ringing in her ears._

"Well, maybe not embrace Anon Dukat," Dax guessed whether Anon came bearing gifts or whatever he came bearing.In that way Anar was the prostitute in Kira's eyes regardless of what she was in his. Selective yes, in that it was only Anon Dukat not his father, but a prostitute nevertheless. Kira understood he had his reasons, she understood his reasons. Forgave him probably, even though it was not something she would have done. 

However, confusing to her that he had? No. None of this was confusing to Kira. Certainly not anything new. Aggravating, yes, in that it reeked of a life she had lived for the first thirty years of her life. The unkempt slums if one was one of the lucky ones. The settlement camps if one wasn't. The elements of Nature. The mud, the mines, ragged fields, and dwarfed trees.

The technology that was worthless without the power resources. Dax glanced at the organization of the samples Julian had steadfastly endeavored to destroy before he gave up and left. He was behaving like a spoiled brat. Totally, totally, fixated on having his will and his way and throwing a tantrum when he couldn't. When the field study took precedence over what he'd rather be doing. When the heat, the life support systems. Kira.

Completely ignoring, not even forgetting, the reason why they were there; he really didn't care. If she wasn't truly feeling sympathy for him, if she wasn't perplexed as to why, she would be very annoyed, angry by this time. She wasn't. She lingered another hour or so straightening out the disarray that would take eight hours to re-catalogue.

He was lying on his stomach on the lower bunk, shirtless and probably naked under the thin sheet covering him, his head resting on his arms crossed in front of him like a pillow, facing the wall. He turned from the wall to look at her when the door opened, his chin propped and resting on his arms. His eyes and head following her approach that ended bedside. She crouched down, lightly touching his fingers lightly touching hers.

"I thought you might be asleep," she smiled, refraining from suggesting he say something like _What if I just say I love you? As he had the other night. Having an idea he might think she was mocking him, rather than only teasing him._

He would have. "No, I'm not asleep," he replied, refraining from saying how he felt like she was intentionally sabotaging what he viewed as an opportunity to spend time and share time with each other. Harsh words. Accusing ones. Inflammatory. Having great potential to trigger an argument, so he avoided them. A familiar and apparently ongoing problem in their relationship. Willing to talk, wanting to talk, trying to talk, in fact talking, they remained only open so far to the new and startling idea, severely limiting each other and the odds of success in what they were trying to accomplish.

Or at least in what he was trying to accomplish. Her, he wasn't so sure. Worf, Curzon, pressing on his mind, he didn't need Kira, Anar, some helpless child named Nadya, and thirty-three more hapless peasants; his head was spinning. Hers apparently wasn't. Taking everything in stride and, yes, if anything about her flabbergasted him, that was what flabbergasted him most of all. He sat up to give her room to lie down once she finished undressing, watching her while she did, confessing this much, "I should have just refused to become involved, requesting a damn two week holiday."

"Refused…" Dax slipped down into bed.

"Yes," Bashir insisted. "On principles alone. What could he have said?"

Principles being Anar et al were Maquis and they were Starfleet. He being? Who? Benjamin? "What would you have done on your two week holiday?" she asked rather than comment on what Benjamin would have said insofar as his Chief Medical Officer refusing to follow an order regardless of whether or not the order measured up to his principles.

Take her with him. Do what he wanted to do there. Get to know her. "Damn it all, Jadz," he said, "I can't feign interest where there is no interest, anymore than I can deny who and what I'm interested in; you. Why do you think I even agreed to come? Why do you think I ever do?"

Jadz. He didn't finish her name, shortening it to a frustrated term of endearment. As far as a two week holiday, Worf would probably have as much to say about that as Benjamin, something else she refrained from mentioning. "No interest other than in Nadya," she smiled though knowing what was frustration would be fury when he found out they were leaving without Nadya, for now anyway.

She was right. When he found out, tomorrow, he was furious once he recovered from his shock, exploding in a tirade of angry words that all the attempted reasoning in the galaxy only made worse. In the end, mid-sentence, he gave up attempting to scream some sense into them and walked out of Lange's lab and headed home to the shuttle without once looking back.

That was tomorrow, however, here it was still tonight. "Come here," she kissed him. The kiss escalating to making love until they feel asleep, until it was tomorrow morning, and they left with Kira one more time for the township and Lange's laboratory to finish cataloguing what they could. Collecting all remaining samples neatly set aside for them to take, and Anar made his nightly appearance around 2100 surface time to remind Kira of her standing invitation to the community meal, theirs as well.

"No," Anar answered Bashir's inquiry into the status of Nadya and her mother and brother returning with them tomorrow to the shuttle. From there the rendezvous with the _Defiant, from there Terok Nor that they insisted upon calling DS9 as if it somehow made the station less Cardassian and more Bajoran. "We find it is not wise at this time."_

The phraseology set Bashir off before he finished digesting what the man was actually saying. "Not wise?" Bashir erupted in a string of Federation expletives, each one more damning, condemning and accusing than the last.

It was something else about the Federation doctor that surprised Anar, finding vulgarities, even mild ones, in contradiction to Bashir's general demeanor.

He wasn't the only one who felt that way. The Trill was also caught off guard by the outburst. Bashir walked out against her efforts and will, ignoring Kira altogether, who gave up early in disgust after her first or second commanding "Bashir!" 

Tempted to follow him the Trill resisted, burying her frustration with deciding it was time to just pack and leave, though not without flustered apologies, "Julian really is very dedicated as a doctor."

Anar's head tipped in condescending reminder. "Again you offer explanations where no explanation or excuse is necessary."

"What about some words of advice?" Dax slammed the field pack she started to pick up back down on the console, a breath away from giving him some together with a fist to the side of his face.

It was the first time Anar had seen her angry rather than calm and cajoling and persuasive. He had to honestly say he preferred her calm. Viciousness crossed his mind. Unchained violence if unleashed. She had the power and physical strength Kira and the doctor lacked. Sisko was not without his hidden reasons for including her. Here he had been wondering about her attraction to the Klingon. She might be Bashir's lover, but she was her husband's mate. A Klingon herself for a moment facing him, unyielding in the heartbeat it took him to rear. "What words would those be?" he snapped though the Trill had already caught herself, collected herself before springing for his throat.

Kira turned from staring annoyed at him to staring in surprised irritation at Dax to return to staring strikingly angry with him. Anar believed he gave up at that point wondering what he had done, never mind anyone else wondering what they had done or not.

Dax took a breath. Her advice directed toward Kira. "I think it's best if we leave."

"Yes," Kira agreed heatedly.

Anar refrained from inquiring if they would like assistance now that Bashir had abandoned them, Kira making a point to relieve any confusion or questions he might have regarding her position. "They're my friends. They're not my officers, they're my friends."

Anar paused. "Admittedly something I had not considered."

"Consider it!" she barked and left with Dax.

"I will," he said, the sudden silence around him supporting how perhaps he should.

"They'll be back," Nadya announced confidently from her hiding place between the sleeping mummy and the far length of the console. Her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms wrapped securely around them, she grinned up at him.

"Tomorrow, I would think, yes," Anar assisted her in wriggling out from her tight corner.

"Two weeks less two days," she took his hand, "with Keiko O'Brien and a Federation runabout -- it has a science module," she explained. "I think it's better that way. You'd miss me if I went to Terok Nor."

"I would," he agreed, mystified by what else she was saying.

"She's a botanist," she reminded. "You asked for a botanist. She'd be here but she had to come from Earth first. That's even farther from Terok Nor than we are. Two weeks by runabout if she were a very good pilot, which she isn't. She isn't a pilot at all. So she has to take a passenger transport -- several of them. Which must take forever," she scoffed in innocent disgust. "I'd never have the patience for it, I know that. I'm surprised she does. She needs to be a pilot. I can show her how if you or Kira don't have the time. It's really not very difficult. It doesn't have to be a cruiser, it can be a personal shuttle. If you ask Kira I'm sure she'll bring one back for us when she returns; if you even have to ask," she agreed. "Anon said he would give us one if he had one, I can't imagine Kira not thinking the same thing."

"Earth…" Anar was still all the way back there.

"It's where she lives," Nadya nodded. "With her daughter Molly who's almost my age, and her son Kirayoshi who's three times older than San but has only just learned how to walk -- that might be something we want to tell Anon," she thought of suddenly. "So when he and Janice have their children Anon doesn't think something is wrong -- there isn't," she promised Anar. "Humans commonly don't walk until they're almost a year; I'm not sure why that is. I guess it just is, like Tan says about so many things."

Tan was not who was on Anar's mind. The name O'Brien possibly, yes. The missing fifth guardian of the Prophets' immortal number five incomplete with Kira, Bashir and the Trill Dax with her Klingon mate Worf waiting in the background where Anar trusted he would wait for some time. Knowing they were a long time away from accepting a Klingon, he wasn't quite sure how ready they were for an O'Brien. Found innocent of Janice's vicious attack was not the issue. They knew O'Brien was innocent and Hawk guilty. But the charges, accusations were very serious, brutal, violent and very fresh. A week old? The actions, behavior of Sisko's Chief Engineer not above reproach, contributing to O'Brien finding himself in the situation he later found himself in to no one's greater surprise than his own. It was a harsh lesson to learn. Awkward. In the aftermath of O'Brien's awkwardness of having to face family and friends and explain how this could have happened to him, it was awkward for the family and friends of Janice Lange also. Made worse by the Federation preferring to get on with its life and politics, refusing assistance from the Maquis in tracking down the criminal responsible for the rape and assault of the Human wife of Cardassia's young Gul Anon Dukat, regardless if the child's father was Shakaar Adon, the elder, his blood or simply his love running in her veins.

If awkward for them, how awkward could it not be for O'Brien's wife to walk into the world, the lives of the family of the woman her husband had only just been cleared of attempting to murder? Anar stared down on his granddaughter looking so innocently up at him. He presumed this Keiko O'Brien was O'Brien's absent mate. The recipient of Bashir's urgent priority transmission to Earth at the time the UFP stood ready to remand O'Brien for trial. 

"Ziyal told me," Nadya sighed, not quite sure why she had to tell him _that. "I'm sure it's right. Her passenger transport is probably only just docking at Terok Nor now." _

Anar smiled. "A few days out still, I would think. You are right. Forever is probably very close to three weeks travel. I do not question your information or knowledge anymore than I question Ziyal or the Prophets. O'Brien is simply a name that I know."

"Federation," she tugged at his hand. "It's okay. She's not Starfleet. Come on. I think we should go to the field tonight. It's really no colder than the Temple."

"Much colder than the Temple," Anar corrected. Where the flickering flames of the candles kept them warm and comfortable as they kept them focused and calm. "You have only just had your therapy, child. Think of that. Bashir is good, but he is not his God. You can assist in your recovery by prayers, but also by paying attention to what is injurious to your health. Cold and not enough sleep are injurious to us all."

"So we'll take a candle with us and you can wrap me up in your cloak," Nadya shrugged. "Commander Dax thinks it's a very good idea I confront my fears; Kira too. Though neither of them feel I should sleep there until it's much warmer, they agree with you about that. The same as they think you should spend the first few nights with me to make sure I'm all right -- what?" she laughed at his surprise. "Yes, I told them about the field because I knew you wouldn't even though you might want to. Kira doesn't think you're weak. She thinks you're very brave. Me, too. She's just annoyed because they were Klingons not Cardassians -- which she really would prefer if only because she really doesn't like them," she whispered discreetly. "Commander Dax just laughed and said she had to agree with her there -- so please, can't we go? I promise I'll stay inside your cloak…"

"Definitely," Nadya burrowed down against the warmth of Anar's chest and heavy robes as they sat looking out over the grapevines that he promised would grow and cover the field before too many years, her candle clutched tightly in her hands. "However, I think…"

"Yes," Anar took the candle before they were both a little warmer than they truly wished to be, setting in down on the ground in front of them.

"Perfect," Nadya approved, pulling his cloak around her, up to her chin as she settled with a brush of her dangling stands of hair out from her eyes. "I like it here. I really do. The Temple is nice but this way if I die I know I won't ever die afraid."

"You die when I die," Anar reminded. "Not before."

She grinned. "I told Kira and Commander Dax that, too. Kira said it was morbid but when Commander Dax explained to her what we meant she said she guessed it was okay."

"It's perfect," Anar assured.

"Definitely," she nodded again. "You're fifty-eight. That's extremely old to someone my age, even though I understand it's really not very old at all."

"No," Anar laughed. "And I'll remember that when I'm 135; fondly, I'm sure."

"I'll remind you," she promised. 

"You will," he agreed.

"I also told them about my dream," she yawned as she stared out over the field searching for any signs of Klingons she only thought she couldn't see. "They liked that much better; my mother, too."

"What dream is this?"

"The one about the grapes," she nodded. "And how they were red for many years before they turned plum. But you said that was all right, also. That we would find lots of things to do with them before being concerned about harvesting them for wine -- a matter of growth and development," she yawned again.

"What?" Anar said.

"Commander Dax's words," she assured. "Not yours. She was trying to explain my dream to me even though I already understood everything. But I remember my mother said I had to be polite and listen or the Federation wouldn't invite me to go with them again -- so, see?" she said. "I'm learning. It's really not too difficult. I already like Kira and I promised Ziyal I would like Commander Dax because that would be much, much harder."

"A Klingon's mate," Anar agreed. "A task before us."

"That we will triumph and survive," Nadya knew her oath by heart. "It's still applicable. You just have to look at it a little differently, that's all." She was focused on the field remembering the horror where she lay in the mud thick with bodies and blood of the dead for over twelve hours, kept quiet and warm by Janice, her grandfather dying beside her.

"Pfrann," she shook her head, knowing what her grandfather was thinking. "Actually I was thinking about Pfrann."

Remembering him crouched next to her grinning, surprised by the rambunctious child who could suddenly be so afraid, wary, even if she didn't run away screaming from something that was only a field. She intrigued him with her missing ear and half-bald head. He knew he was looking at a mutant. He just wasn't sure what had happened to her. Who had done what to her. Him and his brother's Union. The Federation. Or if she had just been born that way, a by-product of his father's occupation. No thought however was a thought of shame. Anger, yes, when the answer was Klingons. But before that? No. Not his shame or blame or his brother's. Anon's face long set and silent behind him, surprising the Bajorans attempting to startle them with the answer "Klingons" to Anon's terse question about his scans showing a field of dead. Two thousand his computer counted before he stopped it and so there were probably several hundred more. He wanted to know what happened to the people. About this plague they claimed he and his troop had and he knew they didn't.

"Klingons?" Pfrann repeated, his yellow eyes flashing in contrast to the concentrated knit creasing his brother's brow. "What do you mean Klingons? What are you talking about?"

"We're not afraid of Klingons," the funny looking little child clutching her grandfather's skirt assured him. "Anymore than we're afraid of you."

"Hush, child," the elder shushed her. "They're only asking questions."

Pfrann eyed him, the face of Dukat studying the face of Shakaar Adon, wondering himself about the Bajoran's quiet stance. Was it courage or was it cowardice? The heavy head of the giant Tan slowly shaking behind the elder who wasn't so old. It was courage. The body young beneath the cloak of an old man. Tight. Strong. The blue eyes clear and bright. They were peasants like he was a peasant. Anon was right. They were Maquis. Thirty-five of them in the town.Two thousand buried in the ground. How many more of them hiding in the hills that they couldn't see or find behind their cloak of holographic projectors? It was all right. Anon was also right that they had better things to do the same as the Bajoran did other than die that day.

"About the field, yes," Pfrann agreed, his gaze dropping back to the little female that he studied again for a long minute before he smiled suddenly. "Yes, the field. A field. It's only a field. Come here, I'll show you." He took her by the hand; she let him. But then she wasn't afraid of him. Nor of the dead buried beneath her feet. The ghosts of the Klingons who ran there with their disruptors and bat'telhs? Yes. He could see it in her eyes.

"Field," he crouched beside her with his grin, his hand sweeping out in demonstration. "Not Klingons, a field. Who cares who ran here? Who cares who died? Did you? No. Did you run? From them, not at them. Did you run in fear from them is what I am asking you."

"No," she scoffed.

"I didn't think so," he laughed. "And you don't run now. Strong as any Klingon. Me, too," he assured. "_Vicious. Brave. It's not the race, it's the attitude. That's what you have to remember when you are afraid, anytime you are afraid. Strong as any Klingon. Vicious. Brave. It's not the race, it's the attitude…" he returned her to her grandfather with advice for Anar. "Tell her. I shouldn't have to. She's Bajoran, just like you. We didn't win the war, you did." He grinned. With his grin turned with a saunter for his brother. The walk cocky, the hips at an angle, the head at a slant as it tipped in answer to his brother mumbling something Anar couldn't hear as the Cardassians turned to leave. Considering Pfrann's answer however that Anar could hear, the question was probably something close to "What do you think you are doing?"_

"What? Nothing," Pfrann said. "She has to confront her fears. I told her that; they know that; she, too."

"Okay…" Janice blew a slow, quiet whistle between her lips where she stood at Anar's side.

"Yes," Anar just said, not quite sure what else there was to say.

"Other than they have the fever," Janice shrugged.

"Yes," Anar agreed. Within two days.

"I guess we'll just put them up in the Town Center," Janice sighed, making her plans as she did so. "I'm sure they have bedrolls."

"Yes," Anar was sure as well.

"Maybe we can talk them into leaving a few behind," she turned away with a smile for Nadya as she took her by the hand. "Pfrann -- is that his name? He was only teasing you, not wanting you to be afraid. You don't have to be vicious at all, ever. Brave and strong, yes. In that way I guess he's right. It's not the race, it's the attitude."

"Yes, Pfrann," Nadya nodded. "But I don't think he was teasing. I think he was serious."

He was serious. Quiet when his youth didn't inspire him to be silly, watchful and digesting when he wasn't brash. Such as the daring action of taking the Bajoran child by her hand unmindful that he could have been killed before he took her a step.

Indeed, he could have. Though his granddaughter had moved only steps from him, Anar distinctly recalled it crossing his mind at the time, as it crossed it now in fond memory. He smiled down on the child he held in his arms listening to her whisper half under her breath "It's not the race, it's the attitude" as she faced the field from the warmth and strength of her grandfather's chest.

"You're much better," he congratulated her.

"I am," she agreed. "Pfrann would be proud of me."

"Yes. Anon, too," Anar assured. "Very impressed."

"Yes," she said. "I wish Kira could see them the way we do. She needs one of your lectures. If I'm too old for a lullaby, she's much too old. My mother's right. You need to stop singing to her."

"I've tried," he had to laugh again at her candor. "As you speak of things you should not even be thinking about at your age."

"Maybe," her eyes closed, pulling his cloak tighter around her shoulders. "You can make that my lecture, if you like."

"Perhaps some other night," he agreed. "Are you cold?"

"No. Nor frightened. Sleepy. We're going to have to leave soon."

"We can leave now if you like."

"Give me my lecture first. You can make it short."

He could try. He thought for a few moments, choosing her questions about Kira's refusal to accept Anon and Pfrann. "Kira forgets the occupied world was Bajor not Cardassia Prime. Pfrann is much too young to understand what is history to him, nothing else. Past to Anon, much too young himself.One a child, little more than your age at the time of the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor. The other no more than his brother's age now. They only know they find solace in evidence that it is not always the Union at fault. Surprised, yes, perhaps a little, that they would find discomfort at the idea that it might be. But that is how it is supposed to be. The younger generation is not supposed to understand the wars or politics of its elders or ancestors. It is we who are supposed to learn and understand what they are questioning and why. As why, most of all, it has to change. Do you understand why?"

"Growth and development," she said. "Versus stagnation at best. Doctor Bashir's frustration. He's afraid we're going to stagnate here if we don't die out first in a life that was never supposed to be ours to live. I heard Commander Dax explaining that to Kira when they left Janice's laboratory to take a walk and get some fresh air."

"As you apparently take what Commander Dax says to heart," Anar rose to his feet with her cradled comfortable and warm in his arms. The candle they left burning where it rested in reassurance to the souls they may be dead but not forgotten.

"I'm supposed to," Nadya said. "She's my friend. You need a friend; Kira doesn't count…Not because you like her," she teased, "but because she's Bajoran. Who can't like a Bajoran? So there you have it," she nodded firmly, "a choice. It must be Doctor Bashir or Keiko O'Brien…which means you have time, more time than Ziyal gave me. Because you haven't met Keiko yet, and you can't pick someone you haven't met. Ziyal is very strict about the rules."

She was more than strict. Asking close to the impossible which Anar felt confident she knew. Some choice. Keiko O'Brien or Doctor Bashir.

"Why do you know the name O'Brien?" Nadya wondered interested. "Did you meet Chief O'Brien on the station? Did you like him?"

"No," Anar said. "I met him yes, but did not like him much, in all honesty. No more than I liked most of them. The Ferengi Rom, yes. I was very impressed by him. His elder brother Quark, I also found no argument with him. A marked compliment to them, my child," he advised her. "Cockroaches of the galaxy I'm sure most view their species as, rightfully so."

"Keiko O'Brien," Nadya decided ignoring his wince. "I haven't met Rom or Quark, I don't even know if they really exist or if you're trying to cheat."

"I would never cheat, child," Anar swore. "Certainly not you."

"Keiko O'Brien," she maintained. "Definitely. If I can like the mate of a Klingon, you can like a mate of the Federation. We'll leave Doctor Bashir for someone else -- my mother, maybe. Or my brother, perhaps," she yawned, moments away from closing her eyes for hours. "Father. One of them will take him, just so we don't have to. He's all right as a doctor, I suppose. He knows as much as Janice at least. But I'm not so sure how long I could tolerate him as a friend." She was asleep.

_And to whom do __we leave the Klingon Worf? Anar wondered as he stroked her tired head. __A Guardian himself, I tell you now, though I tell you not of him._

_Atila. He heard the Prophets chorus answer the concern deep inside of him. The first answer to how many prayers spread out over a week. __Daughter of the defiler Dukat who without the Klingon will not be born to live. We tell you now what you need to know.Worf of Mogh will never walk on your world by his choice as much as yours. You are wise not to labor the child with concerns that are not hers. Believing what her soul needs to know, she will come to know, the same as you, and will never turn on you in wrath. In tears perhaps at times. For guidance always. Your task is trust in silence as well as you have learned to trust in action. The words are there if you listen. The knowledge you seek as well. We say again the chain which binds, binds not you or anyone charged to your care._

"Kira," he said aloud and they fell immediately silent. 

"What?" Nadya stirred in his arms, her drowsy eyes too heavy to open.

"Nothing," he kissed her brow, wishing her back to sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"How pathetic," Q reviewed the touching scene of grandfather and granddaughter. Neither of them really caring about the Universe they professed to care so much about. Neither of them thinking about anyone but themselves. But then that's the way these lower lifeforms were. That's the way they operated. Their worlds in ruins. Their galaxies laid to waste. Their attitudes?

"Pathetic," he said. "Pathetic. A veritable disgrace. Salvation d'amour; I think not." He tapped his toe disgruntled though carefully so as not to shake, break, or wake the dead_. A risk, he had been recently reminded, when one was as potently powerful as he. A not-so-clever thing to do, it had been brought to his attention by a __distinctly divine being with an extremely large head._

  


"Highbrow," Ziyal crunched at his elbow on her lunch of a thousand plus four Kaferian apples. A bushel of them draped over her arm like some sort of good luck charm.

"Whatever," Q said with a sharp, quick, arch of his left eyebrow à la Mister Spock and a knowing smirk smearing across his lips à la Gul Dukat for the Organian he knew was there. "Oh, yes," he nodded, "I _know you're there."_

"What?" Ziyal paused in mid-chew to frown.

"It's logical," Q said.

"Logical?" Ziyal hacked out the half-eaten hunks of goo, vomiting them into her hand. Spitting, choking, gagging them up from the bowels of her intestines and depths of her boots.

"I'm talking!" Q reminded. "Thank you!"

"What's logical?" she insisted.

"A being!" Q ignored her for the sheep in white robes sneaking up behind him, the stars shivering brightly as he fell into a hushed roar and they clung to their gravitational pulls. "Who for some reason seems to think _lurking in the shadows somehow equates don't see to can't see. Don't know to can't know, can't hear, can't sense, can't feel. __Wrong!" he turned around to greet the bleak and silent blackness. Devoid, hollow, lifeless. Not a soul, not a sight, not even a smell around._

"Who were you expecting?" Ziyal grinned, extending him one of her prize-winning apples before she gobbled them all up. "Some Organian?"

"Will you give me that!" Q tore the apple out of her hand, flinging it on the ground for whatever vole, mole, rat, or rodent who cared to devour it as long as it wasn't her. "I'm incorporeal, I don't eat!"

"Well, I'm dead and I do eat," Ziyal shrugged.

"I've noticed," Q assured. "And may I say your incessant chewing is beginning to grate! Is it just something about your race that insists if one is good forty-six has got to be better? Is there a particular reason why you must be obsessive and compulsive about everything you do? It's an apple!" He grabbed the bushel, firing its payload into the heavens like intragalactical Ping-Pong balls. "It's not gold. It's not latinum. It's apples!" 

"You introduced them to me," Ziyal reminded.

"My error," Q breathed deeply to calm his frazzled nerves. "Had I known I would be contributing to some sort of exotic addiction, there's a good chance I wouldn't have."

"Doctor Bashir just thinks too much," Ziyal shook her head. "Commander Dax no more has a carnal fixation with him than he has with her."

"And talks too much," Q agreed wearily with the good physician's audiences past, present, and future. "But do we care? No!" He grabbed her. Spinning her around to face what they did care about and it wasn't apples anymore than it was Bashir. "Au contraire! It is tall. It is built. Brazen, bold, bronze, blue-eyed, and white-haired."

"Anar," Ziyal sighed like there were a hundred of them out there to choose from.

"Yes!" Q said. "Oh, yes. That is precisely what we care about. That is precisely _who. Because quite frankly, my dear, if you had a choice, who would you prefer to wake up and find sleeping next to you? That man, or your father, Mister Spock?"_

"Dukat," Ziyal said. "My father's Gul Dukat."

"Whatever," Q waved. "Just answer the question. I'm divine, not Data. I can't keep everyone straight."

"Who?" Ziyal said.

"Answer the question!" Q insisted.

"My father," Ziyal assured, and she said that awfully quickly for someone who was supposed to be thinking her answer through.

"You fib," Q accused.

"No, I don't fib. I would prefer to wake up next to my father -- "

"Then you're sick!" Q's hand clapped over her mouth. "You're not dead, you're sick. Your father is a derelict. He's vile, putrid, and a host of other surly adjectives that shall remain unspoken for the sake of the minor child within our midst. Agreed?"

"Mess my mamee," Ziyal nodded.

Q stared at her.

"Mess my mamee," her leathery lips strained against the delicate power of his hand. 

"Oh, for -- talk!" Q surrendered. "Yes, all right, fine, talk!"

"Thank you," Ziyal said. "And, yes, I agree. But I still would prefer to wake up next to my father, yes. Definitely."

"A conversation you should perhaps have with your psychoanalyst," Q suggested. "My interest in such primal matters is restricted solely to an acute understanding of how Major Kira has no such desire to sleep with your father whether or not you do."

"I didn't say I wanted to sleep with my father," Ziyal groaned. "I said I would prefer to wake up next to him rather than Anar."

"Silence," Q reminded her about that nine-year-old ear that may be singular but worked rather well; just ask Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir. "And that cannot be if only because it must be -- _your __Prophets words, my little Bajoran-Cardassian apple-sucking Guardian of Future's past. __Not," he emphasized further, "mine. To quote. 'IF the mother dies before the father, or IF the father dies before her!' No vine, no grapes, no wine, __the end. Which IF you think that Bajoran Anar is not going to kill your father when he finds out about Major Kira and your father methinks you best think about that again."_

"Kill my father," Ziyal repeated.

"Yes!" Q waggled his head in front of hers just so she would be sure and see how he was waggling it yes, he was not waggling it no. "Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Kill your father. Kill him. Not kick him in the eye. Not punch him in the knee. But kill him. Kill the defiler Dukat. The butchering pig. The dastardly beast. _Kill him."_

"Oh," Ziyal bit her lip, and while it didn't taste as good as one of her apples, it was at least there.

"So!" Q's arm clapped its way around her shoulders as it always did at these points in their conversations. "We need to tell him. We just need to tell him. _Clearly. No mirror writing. No figure-me-out-if-you-can speeches. No raining grapes. No Klingon chains -- he's not listening to the Prophets anyway," he pointed out to her. "I'm sure you've noticed. He's not listening to a word they say. Not to the words that are there. The knowledge he has but continues to seek. Therefore we need to tell him how we are very sorry but he cannot have Major Kira for his mate, his housekeeper, or his lover, because she is in fact -- IN FACT the Eternal Mate of your father Gul Dukat."_

"Tell Anar," Ziyal said.

"One more time!" Q agreed.

"But you said he'll kill him!" she shrieked even louder than he, and while her Bajoran dead did not waken anymore than they had when he had tapped his toe, it was entirely possible a few Klingon ghosts did get up and leave.

"You said," Ziyal said much more calmly and quietly once Q removed his hand from her mouth, "Anar will kill my father if he finds out about Kira."

"So I did," Q recalled, thinking about what he had said extremely long and very hard and it was difficult. It was quite difficult to think of something else to say. 

"Then why would we tell him?" Ziyal questioned.

"Not him!" Q's hand clapped her on the back. "Your father!"

He was gone. Just like that. In a blink of her watery eyes, back and dropping down beside her sitting cross-legged on the ground. Resting back on his haunches, his elbow propped to support him, his breathing just slightly heavier than when he left, his crown just slightly askew. The collar of his gown stained with the impression of the clenching fingers of his former Cardassian Excellency Gul Dukat as he lounged there thinking, just thinking. 

"Interesting," he mentioned shortly. 

"My father?" Ziyal interpreted. "Oh, yes."

"For a humanoid," Q clarified.

"For any lifeform," Ziyal laughed.

"Hm," Q agreed. "Yes, I'm sure someone somewhere has mentioned that…Made note of it. I'm not really too familiar with Cardassians as a species in general or as a whole ...well, look at me," he shrugged with an acknowledging wave over his robes and gown that were golden for the occasion and flowing as always. "I'm clearly Federation."

"Oh, yes," Ziyal said. Yes, she could see where that was so.

"I mean, I'm not Federation_," Q clarified, "in the sense of __being Federation."_

"Oh, no," Ziyal agreed. No, she could see where there was this distinct unFederation quality about him as well. She smiled. "There is no UFC."

"No," Q assured, "there most definitely is not. Not in this lifetime or in any other. Your Prophets called me with the simple knowledge I would answer; of course I would. Why wouldn't I? The Federation has always held a special interest for me. A particular favorite of mine -- in this galaxy, anyway. I know who the Cardassians are naturally. The Klingons. The Romulans. But there's just something about the Captain Picards…the Captain Siskos…Janeways…their casts and their crews…"

Q reminisced about the Starfleet gods who may not go as far as being _pleasantly surprised whenever he came calling, but they were at least smart enough to __acknowledge his omnipotent power, being, __self. Apparently quite unlike his __Gall Dukat who didn't even bother to __feign interest in the madness surrounding him, the awesome power it represented, notwithstanding the majestic entity controlling it all. A nuisance, he had looked upon Q as, not even a mere man, invading his dreams, interrupting his sleep._

"I just hate to see it all just go away…" Q eyed Ziyal wondering where he was going wrong with her never mind with her luckless father hardly lucid enough to understand one doesn't ever argue with one's hallucinations. But then one isn't usually with it enough to even know when one isn't having an hallucination, merely a nighttime visit from a superior lifeform more than powerful enough to do more than whip his head off and hand it to him.

"But then I am extremely large, my dear," he reminded Ziyal not only of the extent of his power, but his sheer size. "Large, you know, _big. Much, much larger than even this galaxy. I am Q. A Continuum. Extradimensional, if the latter isn't impressive enough. I exist All and Everywhere. Unhindered by the boundaries of Time or Space."_

"What did my father say?" Ziyal asked curiously, as if that mattered.

"Say?" Q dripped in contempt. "What could he say? I am Q, and he is only Dukat."

"I doubt if that even meant anything to him," she shook her head sadly.

"Wrong!" Q sat up straight. "It meant something. But then who did he think tore him out of his bed, whipping him out those ridiculous Federation pajamas_ -- "_

"Orange really isn't my father's color," Ziyal was aware.

"What is?" Q agreed. "And who threw away those orange jammies, yanking his far more appropriate black and silver Cardassian outfit down over his head? Hm? Who did he think did that? Who put him in a boat? Up on a horse? In the backseat of a car?

"The reference being to speed, you understand," he explained. "Symbolic of speed.A car is faster than a horse which is faster than a boat, hence why go slow when one can go not only fast but also far?"

"Oh, yes, I think I understand," Ziyal nodded though admittedly uncertain as to the items of travel he mentioned.

"Good!" Q said. "And, yes, I suppose it all happened very fast. Mildly confusing, possibly, I'll accept, to one who's generally unfamiliar with me."

"I'm really not sure if he's ever heard of you at all," Ziyal continued to doubt.

"Well, he has now," Q promised. "Together with a thorough understanding of what exactly did happen at Little Big Horn -- to General Custer," he reassured her contorted and horrified expression. "Not to him. I didn't harm him. He was never in any more danger than he would be interacting with one of those holographic programs you all seem to love so much; can't fathom why. You're not _doing anything. You're not __going anywhere. It's all just doing and going around you."_

"He didn't like it," Ziyal correctly assessed her father's reaction.

"Like it?" Q snorted. "My dear, you have to first _notice something before you can decide if you like or dislike it. And, no, your father didn't notice, how incomprehensible to me -- if I hadn't been first apprised by you of this unusual habit of his," he quickly refreshed her memory lest she start getting this ludicrous idea in her head that she had a choice in disregarding him. "How astounding. What an inexplicable character, Gul Dukat. Rude, if he is nothing else, which I am not. Asked, I answered."_

"What?" Ziyal inquired.

"My name!" Q snapped. "My being, my identity. _'Who are you?'" he mimicked the nasty annoyance of Dukat, his face twisted, his words demanding, her throat in his hands as he yanked her up to him in the manner her father had taken it upon himself to yank him. "Your Prophets' hell breaking loose around him. His world, galaxy, and throne in ruins. His name and uniform gathering dust. His Eternal Mate falling in love with someone else and that's all he can think of to ask? __'Who are you?'That's all he can think of to do?"_

"He can be difficult," Ziyal refreshed his memory like she had to.

"In a word!" Q released her. "Deranged, would be another one. Who does he think I am? Some irritating Bajoran? Yet another obnoxious Klingon? _Hello! I'm unfathomable, if your father cares to know the truth. Never mind him, I am…And, yes," he settled back down to return to reflecting pensively on her and where, as mentioned, he persisted in going wrong. "I think you should tell him that the next time you pop in since he's not the least bit interested in hearing it from me."_

"I'll try," Ziyal agreed. "But if he's not listening to me about Cardassia Prime or Kira, I'm not so sure he'll even hear me about you."

Q smiled suddenly with an approving poke of his finger in her shoulder. "Now that's an idea. _That's an idea. Major Kira. Why didn't I think of that?"_

"Kira?" Ziyal said. "What about Kira?"

"Your father," Q said patiently. "That's what about Major Kira. The moons of Bajor. The Cardassian outpost Silas 4. They'll be there. They are there. The events leading up to. The ones coming to pass. Whether your father chooses to play your Prophets' game, whether he chooses not to. The only difference I can see is the outcome."

"Well, yes," Ziyal shifted uncomfortably with that thought. "I know that."

"So do I," Q assured. "So do I. Just that lingering issue of how to convey it to your father; I know. I know. I met him. I was there. Easygoing or cooperative he is not. You're so right about that."

And was it his imagination or did she seem almost pleased to hear him say that? Perhaps not as confident in her task as she would like to have him or her Prophets think?Perhaps yes? Perhaps no? Was that the key to the mystery surrounding her? She had her father's façade even if she didn't have his attitude?

"I told you," Ziyal said.

"You did," Q handed her a Kaferian apple with a permissive pat on the top of her head for her to enjoy herself. "You did. Right also when you say we may need Major Kira's assistance. Not only then, but now."

"But how?" Ziyal chewed. "Nerys is as stubborn as he is, I probably should tell you that, too."

"Maybe yes, maybe no. Irrelevant, for I, my dear, am Q," Q said with an eye to the heavens, dented, ripped, and worn by quantum torpedoes, disruptors, and phasers, none of them set to stun. "I am Q."

Unencumbered by dimension, Time, or Space; her Prophets' watchdog of an Organian was another matter. Q looked around. But all was silent. All was dark. The flickering flame of the Bajoran candle long since melted into the mud.

"Um…" Ziyal was saying, no more sure than her father really what he meant by that, though to her it mattered where admittedly to her father it had not.

"I'll tell you what I mean," Q rested back, his legs stretched out relaxed, his elbow propped to support him.

"I'm listening," Ziyal nodded.

"I'm impressed," Q agreed.

"What words of advice?" Kira asked as she pounded across the Town Center taking two steps to Dax's one.

Dax smiled. "I'm not so sure you want me to answer that."

"Dukat," Kira nodded sharply already knowing. "He's another Dukat."

"Now that's interesting," Dax admitted to having kept that part of her assessment to herself except for writing it to Benjamin, though she mentioned it now to Kira clarifying which Dukat she believed Anar bore a similarity to in personality.

"Anon Dukat," she said. "His father? Well, I wouldn't go as far as that."

"Yes, he is," Kira assured though she probably wasn't serious, only angry.

Bashir was both when they arrived at the Ark. Angry as when he had walked out of Lange's lab; serious when he said he didn't want to discuss it. Except they were going to discuss it and they had their first true argument, the three of them, Kira in the middle of it with her revelation that Anar's apprehensions in trusting Nadya to the Federation and DS9 extended far behind Lange to Worf. Impressive, Bashir said later that as heated as it was, it didn't turn personal. Meaning for all the words that were said, the ones that weren't were the ones that really mattered. Kira did not come away enlightened to the physical and personal liaison between Bashir and Dax, Bashir's main concern in retrospect. 

That was his opinion, it wasn't personal. In Dax's opinion, it was personal enough for her. "Worf?" she turned on Kira in the throes of screaming at Bashir her intentions of discussing everything with Benjamin first, beforehand, not after the fact.

"Yes Worf!" Kira snapped.

"Of course Worf!" Bashir barked in agreement. "Excuse me, I'm the one who doesn't understand anything, remember? Good God, the man's a Klingon. Good God, we're talking about Klingons. They massacred them. The child witnessed a massacre. To what extent her Prophets only know."

"It was close enough!" Kira insisted what Dax already knew about the battlefield decorated in grapevines.

"Evident by her ear," Bashir agreed, though knowing nothing of the field. "Or lack of. Hardly crippling; post traumatic stress is far more crippling; battle fatigue."

"You don't know that!" Dax stared at the two of them.

"Oh, please," Bashir scoffed. "Of course we know that, and so do you. No, one can't and isn't holding Worf somehow 'accountable' for God's sake, anymore than they can hold Captain Sisko accountable for Janice; be reasonable, Jadzia, never mind me. It's irrelevant other than in that it can't nor will it negate what happened aboard the station and, yes, quite obviously what happened here."

Dax was outside. She didn't know how she got there, or even remembered walking out. Inside Bashir continued to fume at Kira arguing with him.

"I said I'll talk with Sisko!"

"You do that," he agreed as she stalked forward to hail Anar and inform him they were leaving come first light, as if it made a difference other than a chance to say goodbye. "Because no, I'm not taking no for an answer, anymore than I'm letting it drop. I'm a doctor and that child needs a doctor, I don't give a damn what or who she is -- and if someone wants to take my pips for that, be my guest!" he pulled them off his collar and flung them after her.

Kira ignored him. He turned from her to stare at the forward hatch and beyond where Dax hadn't gone far. He found her sitting on the ground beside the cargo hold, her arms furiously crossed as she huddled in her jacket. It was by far the coldest night, or perhaps it just seemed like it was.

"Don't touch me," Dax warned as he sat down beside her.

"Now that's an absurd thing to say," he replied. "Almost as absurd as 'if I truly loved you' I would do what? Spend the next six years ignoring you like I spent the first? Prove I love you, how? By replicating a teddy bear or a bouquet of flowers, or at least a cup of tea? I can't. No more than you can."

"Worf would never condone this," she insisted. "Never. You know that."

"No I don't know that," he didn't apologize. "I've no idea what Worf would or would not condone. No more than you. If only because neither of us really knows what happened here and what didn't. For all we know it could have been a battle that the Maquis lost and the Klingons simply won."

"That has nothing to do with Worf!"

"From your point of view, not from Anar's. I'm not saying I agree with him. I'm saying what I said, and have been saying.He has to look beyond Worf, Janice Lange, whoever, to the fact that his granddaughter is desperately ill -- "

"Julian…" she sighed, tired of hearing the same thing over and over.

"Dying," Bashir insisted the emotion in his voice rising suddenly, sharply. "The same as his world and that is maddening to me that he doesn't seem to want to understand that. It's contradictory, because yes, I agree with you. That is why he brought us here. The devil with Lange's cream. Secondary at best, and obviously ineffective in treating Nadya for all its reputed powers. If that makes me unreasonable, sorry, but that's the way it is. I can't accept it. I'm not even quite sure how much more of this I can take, handle, if anyone cares to know the truth…"

He was already shaking his head no, talking to himself, not her, in resignation, attempting to explain it to his understanding. "No, I can't take this. I can't. I'm a doctor. What do they expect from me? What do they expect out of me?"

He didn't know. If she didn't know, he didn't know, not what any of them expected or wanted. Bashir stared pensively just out. Toward where there was nothing, crouched in a seated position, his knees bent and drawn up, his arms resting on them, dangling down between his legs. Ziyal smiled, hardly frightening him. But then he hardly believed he even really saw her, was seeing her. There for a few moments and gone the next, leaving him knowing he was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, drained, truly. Discouraged and disgusted, and, yes, somewhere in the regions of his subconscious mind she was probably perfectly symbolic of everything he was thinking. Senseless death. Senseless injury. Tragedy. From Ziyal to Janice and now the child Nadya. 

"Where are your pips?" Dax interrupted.

His head dipped like he was checking his collar before he looked at her from under his brow with a smile. "Around. I also said I was angry and didn't want to discuss any of this. What did you think? I wasn't serious?"

"I don't know what to think. I'm not quite sure if I've ever seen you…" she stopped there to eye him, deciding she had seen him as defiant or stubborn at least once or twice in the past six years.She sighed again. "Julian, you may just have to accept Anar's point of view regardless of why he wanted us here. Lange's inventory, yes. To help probably also. To do what we can do including bearing witness. But that's a long, long way from agreeing to Nadya returning to DS9 with you. The same as you just may have to accept Benjamin's position. I don't know what he's going to say. I know what I think, believe, would like to believe. But there's no way I can guarantee you Benjamin's going to agree to Nadya being on the station whether or not it breaks his heart to say no."

"And you may just have to accept that I'm not going to accept it, not without an argument," he turned to face her, his head bent close to hers, his hand smoothing the top of her hair before it cupped her chin, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth.

"Stop that," Dax said, though not because she was angry.

"The devil I will," Bashir refused even if she was. "Six nights making love is hardly a firm base. Not quite sure what state I'd be in if I didn't have those six years to fall back on. Darling, we've just had our first argument."

They had had an argument every night but that was beside the point. "Five nights," Dax said, "and you're secure. You're a little too secure if you want to know the truth."

"Six," he kissed her. "Tomorrow makes seven. The next, eight. Interesting theory of yours otherwise, though I have a suspicion you're wrong."


	5. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She was wrong. Bashir didn't realize himself to what extent at the time. For now concern for discovery won out over desire. They returned to the shuttle to find his pips with the able assistance of a tricorder. Elise had answered Kira's hail for Anar who wasn't available, finding no complaint with their decision to leave a few hours ahead of schedule and doubting if Anar would either.

"Just tell him," Kira signed off from Elise, turning her impatience on Bashir and Dax. "I've had enough!"

"_She's had enough?" Bashir quipped to Dax as Kira's attention shifted to putting the Ark through a full systems analysis level 3 that was apt to take all night, and that was only if everything turned out all right._

"Stop it," Dax reminded, accepting her change of orders from Bashir's assistant to Kira's throughout the analysis and suggesting Bashir consider accepting his.

  


"Quite," Bashir said. "From doctor to cargo specialist."

"It is a mess," Dax put it bluntly.

"As I can always sleep tomorrow," Bashir agreed. "Where have I heard that before?" He ducked through the interior hatchway to turn back.

"What?" Kira huffed.

"Our gear. Half our gear is still in town."

"So?"

Bashir nodded. "Yes, well, I'd say my neuro medkit pales by comparison, which it probably doesn't. Suspect it's more the act of supplying Federation equipment to non-Federation personnel, not the quantity of the supply. Quite all right. Perhaps we can arrange for adjoining prison cells."

"What?" Kira said to Dax when he departed.

"I…" Dax started to say but then just said, "He gave Sorge his neuro medkit for Lange? You're right. What are we going to do with him?"

"I don't know," Kira assured, other than what she'd like to do with him.

"Explains why we're leaving half our gear behind," Dax followed her forward.

"We're coming back!" Kira reminded, that fact already a fact and straight in her mind.

"Well, maybe so is Sorge," Dax supposed.

"Just!" Kira waved for them to get to work.

"Yes," Dax agreed how that was probably the best idea.

She retired for a needed break eight hours later, an hour before Kira, an hour after Bashir. Liftoff more realistically rescheduled for 1200 surface time, the cargo hold and Lange's inventory neat, though misleading in its organization. That was all right. It gave them something to do during the two-day flight to meet the _Defiant. An hour after Kira flopped down on her cot to stare at the underside of the one above her Anar was answering her earlier hail, inquiring about the status of the analysis._

"It's fine," Kira answered him abruptly, adding how they would be back within a week to secure their equipment and Nadya.

"Bashir will be, at least," Anar agreed, "with or without his uniform. A recent revelation, at your insistence, admittedly, nevertheless quite possibly accurate.Your friends become you more than your Federation commission, convenient though as it is at this point in our lives."

Kira just stood there looking at him. Anar smiled. "The truth."

"Whatever," she said. "You're a week too late."

With the revelation? The compliment? Or to have a chance? "Perhaps," Anar acknowledged. "We'll have to see. Anything else?"

"No," Kira severed the hail to check the status of the system analysis that was twenty minutes from completion with results solidly within acceptable parameters. "Bashir, Dax," she hammered her com badge, ordering them to the bridge as she initiated procedures for liftoff and began a thirty minute countdown. 

_Now why did I anticipate that? Floated through Dax's semi-conscious mind as Bashir dropped back on the bunk heaving "damn it," with Kira's call._

Dax kissed him. He let her until he had to stop her or he'd never get up, which they had to. He rolled over, pulling back from her attempting to coil around him.

"What?" Dax protested.

"No, it's all right, come on," Bashir reassured, hitting his head on the upper bunk as he rose, tugging at her hands, encouraging her to get up as well, and tripping over her boots waiting for him on the floor.

"It's hot in here," Dax remarked, wondering what he wanted her to do with the T-shirt he handed her.

"Damn hot in here," Bashir zipped up his jumpsuit, taking the T-shirt from her to pull it down over it her head. "For a fair and obvious reason why."

"Hm," Dax said, feeling his slippery wet arms curl around her. "You're sweating."

"Not the only one. You all right?"

Dax shook her head. "No. But then I really, really,_ really hate to be interrupted."_

Bashir laughed. "My God but you're a sight."

"You, too," she nodded. "Drunk. You look drunk."

"Also for a fair and obvious reason why," Bashir kissed her for five minutes too long by which time she was awake, Kira's second call emphatic, and he was gasping for a relief that was not to be had.

"Julian…" Dax said as he hung onto her for support.

"No, I'm all right," Bashir shook his head, which was a lie. He was not all right, quite shocked by the fact that he could even stand. They parted in the doorway, Dax turning forward and Bashir veering aft in search of the replicator and a much needed glass of cold water that he drank a swallow of, dowsed himself in the face with the next, drank another, and poured the rest over his head. It was perfect.

"God, yes," he sank back against the replicator. Which the water wasn't perfect but it was better than coffee, his stomach turning acidic with even the thought. Nevertheless, he replicated Dax a cup of tea and himself a cup of coffee as a prop to hold as he treaded forward, formulating his lecture on the four stages of non-REM sleep, delta waves and general exhaustion just in case Kira had any questions.

Kira didn't. She simply looked determined when Dax slipped up to sit down in the vacant navigator's seat, ready with her if-necessary explanation for any delay that was not as scientific as Bashir's but generally believable; Hopefully.She smiled. "1200 already?"

"Ten minutes," Kira answered tersely.

Dax nodded, deciding an apology was probably in order. "Sorry," she said. "But I had the headset on not to disturb Julian and I guess I didn't hear you -- or for that matter Julian," she glanced at the cup of tea being set down on the console in front of her.

"Stage four," Bashir agreed. "Like trying to rouse a damn dead body."

"Huh?" Kira said.

"NREM," Bashir stifled a yawn, wandering only as far as the closest wall that he promptly slid down, resting his head back and closing his eyes as he sat on the floor. "Deep sleep.Jadzia's trying to be diplomatic. The truth is, we were both rather hoping you would just go away -- yes, I know," he nodded, "prepare for impact; I'm prepared."

"Liftoff," Dax laughed.

"Close enough," Bashir tipped over, his head cradled in the crook of his arm, the floor uncomfortable under his hip. "Wake me up when we get there."

"Just in case anyone's ever wondered why his parents stopped at one," Dax turned around for the console.

"No," Kira was not wondering. "Standby full impulse. SIF: high."

The engines shook themselves awake. Bashir kept his eyes closed and his fingers crossed, taking his cue from the calmness in the voices. "Standby full impulse," Dax reported. "Structural integrity field: high and holding."

Kira nodded, checking the status of the analysis one last time. "Let's do it."

"Let's," Dax agreed as Kira engaged the thrusters.

It was a little rough, but doable. Bashir felt his head and stomach swim with mild nausea as the interior pressure rose sharply under the strain of sudden elevation, suggesting he would probably fair better sitting up. He did. Kira and Dax calm and verbally addressing the situation already leveling out, Dax reported and he concurred, the motion sickness long passed. He opened his eyes in time for a fleeting though breathtaking glimpse of the snow-covered peaks of a mountain range approaching them very quickly as the Kira cut a wide arc around. The mountains vanished. The shuttle clearing the summit by 15,000 kilometers easily as it plunged into the upper spheres, through them to open space.

"It's a pretty world, actually," Bashir got to his feet.

"Very pretty," Dax agreed. 

"At 10,000 feet," he grinned as she reset the shuttle's chronometer. "Was it 10,000?"

"Little more than that," she nodded."The apex had to be at least 10,000."

"Geologically active, anyway," he surmised. "Of course, how geologically active impossible to tell at a glance. Did we have to do that, by the way?"

"Well…" Dax smiled at Kira.

"But what did it hurt?" Bashir agreed. "Couple of hundred miles from the colony, easily. Certainly can't start complaining about contamination at that distance. It's not like we scanned -- did we scan?"

"No," Dax shook her head.

"Only what would be required for normal, safe, navigational procedures," Bashir understood. "It's not as if you guessed the mountain range was there, or where it was, other than out there somewhere. We knew it had to be there, simply where -- you didn't guess, did you?" he asked, not quite sure if he liked the idea that only she was answering him, Kira remaining silent throughout. "It didn't sneak up on us, did it? We are talking only a couple of hundred miles at best."

"No," Dax said. "We had an idea it was there."

"I think I'll stop there," Bashir decided.

"You sure?"

"Well," he said, "maybe one other question…"

"What time is it?" she guessed.

"The day anyway, doesn't have to be to the hour. The hour I can see, if I look," he admitted, "day as well." He picked up her hand from covering the chronometer. Parted her fingers to peek through them and have a look.

"Monday," Dax said.

"What time Monday?" Bashir requested suspiciously, finding two days a significant amount of time to gain on one hand and now quite obviously lose.

"0200?"

"Well, that does it for me," he patted the backs of both their seats. "May I suggest for you two ladies as well? It's called sleep deprivation and/or -- versus, actually, autopilot. Keep her at impulse. Flip on her long-range scans. Chart our flight pattern -- all in the appropriate order, of course. And once through the asteroid field, naturally," he pointed out the forward screen with its view of a significant wasteland of space junk -- _natural space junk, and therefore acceptable space junk despite all the damage it too could cause._

"I'm going to bed; sleep. Where I shall be unavailable for the next eight hours. Ten, if I set my mind to it. One last time, I suggest you ladies consider the same…and no headsets," he paused in the corridor with a grin for Dax.

"If you find your headset comes up missing I plead guilty in the first degree. But then 40 decibels of _music is questionable to begin with. 40 decibels of residual __static leaking through your headset is not. Little wonder you couldn't hear me. Sheer wonder you can hear me at all. Goodnight."_

"Frightening," Kira commented.

"Yes. He can be," Dax said, meaning it in a different way than Kira.

_Oh, what a smooth liar you are, Julian Bashir. She smiled down on him grinning back at her when she entered the cabin an hour or so later to find him in his usual position of lying on his stomach with his chin propped up on his crossed arms. __Really, what a remarkably smooth liar you are._

"Come here, you," he pulled her down next to him when she sat down on the bunk.

"What happened to those eight-ten hours of sleep?" she asked.

"Nothing happened to them," he tugged her hair loose from its hastily gathered braid, kissing the ends of it, kissing her. "Can just stay in bed all day. Who's to say what?"

He had a truly loving way about him, in his kisses and in his caress that she first considered painstakingly slow and still considered slow though fluid. There was an obvious strength in his arms encircling her. A slyness about him, she had to laugh because she was losing her clothes in a manner that seemed to suggest she wouldn't necessarily notice this at first.

"Kira?" she did laugh in answer to his question as far as who might have something to say.

"You think so?"

"Definitely," she nodded.

"Oh, well, we can take care of that," he ordered the computer to impose a security lock on the door.

"Well…" Dax said as far as that because it wasn't as if Kira couldn't overrule the lock because of course she could for a reason or for none. The same as Kira was quite capable of just walking in with or without a security lock at any point in time, certainly anywhere between eight and ten hours, again for a reason, or again for none. "Even if she didn't overrule the lock, I'm sure she would at least ask why," she smiled.

"You think so?" Bashir said.

"Definitely," Dax nodded.

"Well, there's a simple enough explanation," Bashir kissed her. "I told her I didn't want to be disturbed."

Dax had to laugh again and say it out loud that time. "Oh, what a smooth liar you are."

"You mean about the headset?"

"I mean…" she almost said _about everything but she changed that. "Yes. I meanthe headset."_

"Well, that's your lie, actually," he flipped her boot over his shoulder, followed by her jumpsuit which explained why they had to spend a few minutes every morning sorting out what was whose. 

"Tell you what's not a lie, though," he stretched out next to her.

"What's that?" Dax smiled.

"I love you. So, yes, there's the answer should anyone really care to ask."

He said it with such sincerity. Not meaning Dax didn't think he was sincere; she did. It was instead perhaps something she didn't expect him to say? Her head tipped in a silent examination of him, what he said and what he meant. A delay before she answered, noticeable or not.

It was noticeable to the extent that he had time to kiss her and say, "I love you," again.

"I love you," she answered immediately. "I love you very much."

Kira did not walk in, but then they did not test the boundaries of cause for suspicion by spending even eight hours in bed. They were both awake and up within six? Maybe seven hours later?It was closer to seven. Julian resigned himself to working on Lange's inventory that he truthfully considered a technician's job. A minor degree of resentment when approaching Lange's haphazard organization coupled with his extensive frustration. Dax knew that, the same as she knew he and his medical doctorate would both survive. She relieved Kira who was tipped back in her seat at the helm, her heels up on the console. She had probably slept that way on and off through the night.

"No, I'm fine," Kira waved for Dax to take over if she wanted to when Dax approached her about her perhaps wanting to get a few hours sleep in a more conventional manner? In a more conventional setting?

Dax did take over. Kira remained there for a short while before she finally got up and retired to her cabin. Dax watched her as she walked away, wondering if Kira had any suspicions, thoughts, or ideas about her and Julian? Yes Kira did, she decided, whether or not Kira was having an idea now.

Acknowledging that, Dax realized that she believed Kira had "an idea" about her and Julian for years. The same as the Chief had "concerns". Garak "wonders". Worf?

She denied thinking about Worf for the moment finding Garak and the Chief easy to dismiss, and the likely definition of Kira's idea palatable. Julian and she had an understanding about each other. That understanding at times, if not at others, incorporating a physicality between them or not incorporating one. Kira was wrong. There had never been a physicality between her and Julian prior to the past week whether or not the interest was there, the desire, or the sheer _want. But Kira's idea was reasonable in that it was not judgmental, condemning, or even really interested only to the extent that personally it was not the sort of relationship Kira was interested in having with anyone. It was largely what her relationship with Shakaar had become, Kira felt, or was becoming toward the end. She had been down that road before -- who hadn't? And she wasn't traveling it again._

Worf? Dax was thinking about Worf whether or not she wanted to. What did Worf have? "Suspicions"? That annoyed her considerably. Suspicions alluded she was having an affair with Julian, had had one and was continuing to have one, a series of frivolous periodic encounters over the last six years.

"Wrong," she said aloud as she checked their flight path. "Oh, so wrong. " A cup of tea mysteriously appearing next to her, Julian's hand on her back and his kiss on her cheek.

"You're supposed to be working," she reminded.

"Kira's gone to bed, I see," he countered as if that meant something significant.

"Well, I would hope you determined that first," Dax agreed.

"Before the kiss?"

"No, before the tea," she picked up her cup. "Thank you. Now go back to work. That's an order."

He kissed her cheek again with the wicked disclosure. "Of course I determined it first. I'm not only a smooth liar, I'm also a first class spy."

"Go," she pointed aft.

He went. And then he came back. And then he left again. And then he came back again. _Lange's inventory is far more extensive than any of us realized…Dax wrote in her journal for Benjamin, explaining why they were less than 40% finished with the initial cataloging when they docked aboard the __Defiant two days later._

"But they'll be back," Q pointed out to Ziyal making the acquaintance of Humpty-Dumpty. A curious looking lifeform with his large oval body and spindly arms and legs; she found him cute and certainly extremely amiable and passive.

"Not for a week and a half," Ziyal shrugged.

"You're right," Q sat down, with a _ping of his fingers sending Humpty for a test tumble off the security of his stone wall. "The universe is only on the brink of destruction, why make rash decisions?"_

"He exaggerates," Ziyal promised Humpty, giving him a hand back to his seat, startled as he was to find him rolling around in the unprotected field that only looked like soft, green grass. Her new friend even more relieved than she was to find himself shaken but otherwise perfectly fine.

"Stop that," Ziyal cracked Q's wrist in scolding.

"_I didn't do it," Q assured her. __"I didn't," he insisted to Humpty, but just to ensure there were no hard feelings he gave them each a fresh, shiny apple to eat while sitting on their wall._

"Ho, ho, ho, we look like we've had fun," O'Brien greeted the trio who left with a kilo of equipment and returned with forty more of junk. His humor fixed, false, but they didn't know that. No reason how they could, or why they should. He was only half-joking anyway. His chuckle quickly followed by a serious, "Whoa, whoa, whoa," for an anxious and ambitious Rom dragging the booty out by the cartload.

"Organization," O'Brien instructed. "Let's get a little organization here."

"Lange," Dax offered Worf visually inspecting the assortment of field packs and lockers.

"Some old, some new, some borrowed," Bashir plunked one, two, three, packs down on top of one another in a harrowing tower threatening to topple over.

"Yes," Worf said to Dax, elaborating on his recollection of Lange's duffels with their library of data logs, equally impressive in that they were equally extensive in number. He looked at Bashir listening.

Bashir grinned, hearing "That's not what I recall" come out of his mouth for some reason. Odd, because his brain was certainly saying something much more like _How awkward in response to being there, seeing Worf. __Feeling his stomach churn with that persistent sensation of motion sickness he had first experienced two-plus days ago during liftoff.The proverbial shoe-on-the-other-foot not comfortable, he'd grant Worf that much. Excruciatingly painful, if Worf cared to know, half-inclined to boldly tell him that. More than half-wondering if how he felt was how Worf felt these past two years, was feeling now; sincerely hoping that Worf was; Bashir looked away._

"Yeah, we know what _you recall." The Chief was hitting him in the arm. "Come on, move; __move. No reason to make a project out of this, just tell me where you want the crap."_

"Quite staggeringly heavy," Bashir agreed.

"Huh?" O'Brien said.

"The duffels?" Bashir picked up the top field pack from off the stack before it did fall and started across the shuttle bay for the hatch. "You said something about Janice's duffels?"

"Where's he going?" O'Brien asked Rom. "Am I speaking English here? Hello."

"Um, yup, hi," Rom nodded. "And…I don't know. Where do you want this crap?"

"Well…" Dax smiled, not that she had been asked specifically.

"Sorry," Bashir was back. "Habit."

"No transporter," Dax explained to O'Brien.

"Quite," Bashir nodded. "I assume you are transporting this?"

"No, I'm carrying it," O'Brien retorted, having no clue what either of them were talking about, but that was okay, they seemed to be having the same trouble with him. "One more time…"

"The science lab," Bashir imagined. "That all right with you?"

"Yes, that's fine," Dax agreed.

"Thank you," O'Brien said. "Like pulling teeth, but thank you.Next question -- "

"Well, I guess we may as well transport as well, yes," Bashir shrugged.

"Give me strength," O'Brien turned to Kira.

"I said, that's it," she replied.

"No, you didn't," he assured, "and, no, it isn't -- give me that," he took the data padd from Rom with its listing of equipment.

"Um, yup," Rom said, "they're missing both medical field kits -- "

"I don't give a damn about the kits." O'Brien walked around the cargo hold nodding, "Uh, huh, uh, huh," and punching out the details, the ones present, and the ones absent.

"Notice," he slapped the data padd in Kira's hand, calling her attention to the bottom line, "unsigned. You want to log yourself in? Be my guest. But I'm not, and neither's Worf. You listening?" he checked with Dax since it was an intergalactical rule as far as who wore the pants in the family irrespective of rank, and hence who was _the boss. Something that had a lot to do with his caustic, fixed, mood, nothing of which any of them needed to know anything about, especially the boy dressed in medical blue. "Neither's Worf."_

"Oh, I'm listening," Dax nodded.

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said, having heard that a few times in his life before also. "Suit yourself. It's not my neck; it's yours. Me? I know nothing, I see less. Get it?" he moved to the transporter console with a wave of his arm around. "I _see less."_

"Um, yup, me, too," Rom nodded to Kira, "I don't know what happened to your equipment either. Maybe you do?"

"Don't worry about it," she suggested.

"Nope, not me," Rom agreed in relief, scurrying over to the Chief cupping his hand and calling, "Oh, yoo-hoo!"

"Well, actually I have the equipment," Bashir informed Kira before she accepted a responsibility that he truly felt was his, regardless of whose idea it had been to leave half of their inventory behind. "If anything does turn up missing I suppose they can just take it out of the family estate."

"You're joking, right?" Kira verified.

"About the family estate?" Bashir grinned. "Or about whose responsibility I feel it is? Well, I must have something I can sell."

"Such as my headset?" Dax chimed in.

"Well, yes, not quite sure what happened to that…" Bashir turned away from her for the Chief bustling over heated and red-faced. "What?"

"Stand still," O'Brien said, like he should have to tell him this. "He's trying to take a reading. Pick a spot and stay there."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Sorry, didn't realize I was moving."

He was though, unconsciously sidestepping Worf and Dax who as unconsciously kept up ending next to him. 

"I mean, we can do this in one shot, right, folks?" O'Brien was checking with the gang of them not only Bashir to be sure those on the left wanted to stay on the left. Those on the right wanted to stay on the right, and so forth. "We're not trying to transport a planet over here. We're trying to transport a bunch of field packs, a couple of containers, and five of us -- got that?" he checked with Rom. "Five of us. Not four. Not three and a half."

"Oh, yup, got it," Rom swore. "Okeydokey, no problem…one, two, three, four, five, yup, you're all there -- say, _smile," he burst into a raggedy-toothed grin, hawking out a laugh at his joke. "Oh, boy that's good, Rom. That's really, really good. Okay, let's see…"_

O'Brien stared. "Will you just initiate the goddamn transport?"

"Yup, I'm doing it. I'm doing it," Rom nodded, and he was.

_"It's got to be close to retirement or something; it's got to be." Bashir heard the Chief say as they faded away. "What's wrong with you?" he wondered._

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"Me?" They were in the science lab, O'Brien plucking at Bashir's stiff, stained jumpsuit reeking of two weeks' abuse. Kira and Dax's uniforms in a similar state, but neither of them anywhere near as much fun to rib. "Waste management not part of your vocabulary? Aw, gee, I'm sorry. Welcome to the real world. Rough, isn't it?"

"Maid's day off," Bashir agreed with a grin for his watch. "That late already? Can't believe it -- "

"Nice try," Dax had him by the hand pulling him toward the console with a smile and assurance for O'Brien, "Actually, by the second day it really was to the point of wasting energy."

"Hey," O'Brien shrugged, "you had to live with him for a week, you don't mind, I don't mind."

  


"He had to live with us," Dax's smile rested on Bashir.

"Oh," Bashir said, not as far as the living arrangements. Or how the three of them complemented each other's nauseating appearance and smell. "Well, no, it's not a matter of trying to get out of helping you with cataloging -- "

"Us," Dax nodded, "helping us."

"Yes, us," Bashir supposed. "I was just rather hoping…"

He was in the Infirmary, showered, changed, sternly telling himself to focus on uploading Nadya's medical screenings. He couldn't focus, finding himself drifting into daydreams that he couldn't remember, or others that he didn't want to. The planet seemed an eon ago, certainly very unreal. He tried to delay the feeling of losing something, at least leaving it behind, while still aboard the shuttle, but the party, as it was said, was over, things different in the cold light of dawn.

"Damn it all," he pushed himself away from the console with anger and subsequent apologies for Kira he didn't realize was there at first; he did now."Sorry. Frustrating."

She nodded. Showered and changed as he was, like he said, the planet eons ago, unreal, within hours everything returned to status quo. "You going to have something for Benjamin?"

"Why?" Bashir smiled. "Dax feeling a little anxious about things herself? Not like her."

"I'm going to talk to Benjamin," Kira advised him, assured, actually.

_Of course. Made sense. Bashir supposed, though Kira was hardly a galactical-class orator, anymore than he. Short, to where he was long, entering angry, not simply leaving. Nevertheless, she was a "force to be reckoned with", the same as he. Not that any of them seemed to realize this about him, or even gave the slightest hint in being interested in finding out. Bashir smiled again. "Meet you at the upper pylons at 2400."_

Kira frowned, a response that also made sense. There weren't any upper pylons, they were aboard the _Defiant. It wasn't anywhere near 2400, much closer to 0400. He had been in the Infirmary six hours, accomplishing little except confirming he was sick, nauseous, and furiously angry over being forced back into a reality he didn't like, want, and had very little say in doing anything about. _

"A joke," he shook his head, not that she got the joke about exerting one's independence and returning to the colony, damn the Federation and anyone else. "By something I suspect you mean something definitive? Or even anything definitive to show Captain Sisko? Such as a treatment plan?"

"Whatever," Kira shrugged, less interested in the details than in having something, anything coherent ready to wave in defense like a Bajoran sword should the name Shakaar prove insufficient in giving Sisko cause for pause.

It was probably sufficient, Bashir believed, not selling the Captain short, but he simply understood politics better than he cared to. "Whatever I can manage," he promised.

"Good," Kira said. "Meet you on upper pylon 3 if we're wrong." She walked away, Bashir watching her mildly amused and certainly quite surprised. Thinking also, perhaps not exactly wondering why he'd never found the Major Kiras Nerys romantically attractive or stimulating, especially this one, rather than leave them to the Shakaars Adon and Anars. Kira really was extraordinarily lovely. Delightfully and beautifully feminine in her slender, compact size and shape, and large, almost overwhelming brown eyes.

One look in those eyes though, a moment in her presence, it wasn't a woman one was looking at or talking to, but a force, oh, definitely, yes. Assertive, aggressive, distinctly no one's fool. At times, too often in his opinion, needlessly confrontational.

"Do you ever sleep?" Bashir inquired aloud, not in a manner or matter of ridicule, simply interest. "Rest, I mean. Do you ever?"

"Huh?" Kira turned around.

"Foolish question," Bashir shook his head in agreement, though it gave him his answer as to why Jadzia rather than Kira Nerys if it even were a question, or for that matter a choice, it wasn't. An observation only. An explanation of sorts as to why Jadzia, a woman who morally, if not legally, should be considered unavailable if one placed any sort of stock in such archaic principles or rules of conduct, which admittedly he did not. To do so would make him an idealist, not a realist, even though realistically Kira was far more available to fall in love with. A woman he could pick up and carry if he ever felt so inclined. A primitive action no doubt accompanied by the equally primitive thought that such an ability somehow translated into an ability to perhaps not control her exactly, but exert any sort of influence over her; out of the question.

"You're right, who does?" Bashir sighed out loud about the strains of duty while internally saying something more like _so yes, that explains why Jadzia rather than the Kiras Nerys. Who he would likely find exhausting beyond Jadzia, who was exhausting enough. To where Kira would probably find him boring as opposed to Jadzia who probably found him something more like adorable; wonderful, he supposed if he were petitioning to be her pet, sickening otherwise._

"Just…" Kira said what he expected her to say, waved her usual wave and left, unmindful and uncaring that he would love to _just._

"Just anything," Bashir also waved the mandatory accompanying _whoosh with his hand. Finding it remarkably callous of Jadzia if nothing else to not appreciate, at least understand how he would far prefer to __just, even though he couldn't begin to __just whatever it was they would like him to __just about._

The science lab was deserted and dark, a neat row of selected samples lined up on the console ready for their morning analysis when he found himself there. It could have been worse. It could have been dark and occupied. Something other than Lange's collection cluttering the corners, floor and console. Bashir lingered in activating his com badge, the unspoken request poised on his lips and asking for trouble when there wasn't necessarily a reason.

"Location of Commander Dax?" he hit his com badge.

_"Commander Dax is currently in her assigned quarters."_

"What assigned quarters?" Bashir snapped. "Who's assigning quarters on a ship that's at less than one sixth crew capacity, if that -- never mind," he walked out before the computer finished analyzing the question attempting to provide him with the answer that he already knew.

He was in his quarters unassigned though they may be, more randomly picked on a deck that he couldn't even remember long before the door to the cabin closed. However, troubling the computer for the whereabouts of Doctor Bashir when he was Doctor Bashir seemed just a touch absurd.His duffels were another matter. The computer agreed, locating them for him two decks away and several cabins removed, much too far to be concerned about trucking after them at this hour of the morning. He didn't even think of requesting an emergency toiletries transport, though the _Defiant was certainly far more upscale in her amenities and comfort than the hellhole he had just come from, it didn't even cross his mind. What crossed it was dropping down on the bunk and dropping off to sleep._

Right. He lay there like a dead man on his back staring up at the bunk above him. Bashir sat up. "Location of Commanders Worf and Dax."

_"Commanders Worf and Dax are currently in their assigned quarters." The request sounded vaguely familiar to the computer but it answered nevertheless._

"Damn it all!" Bashir jumped up, angry, incredulous, completely unable to fathom how Jadzia could turn from him to Worf so easily and then do what? Turn back again?

He was in the commissary, a small collection of coffee cups decorating the table like he was a participant in an early-morning tea party with a group of invisible friends. Two hours later he was back in his cabin, the one that included his duffels, having recalled its location somewhere along the way. Sorry to report that if he were anticipating some sort of loving, joking, note or message left in the data bank from Jadzia claiming _missed you, tired of the chase, thinking of you he was wrong. It was 0600. At noon Federation time he was back in the Infirmary, refreshed, focused, his priorities in order._

"I'd like your hours," Dax stopped by thirty minutes later to invite him to take a break for lunch.

"Be more like breakfast," Bashir laughed, "if one listens to rumors. But, yes, all right. Ten minutes? Meet you in the commissary?"

"Sounds good," she left, expecting it to be more like fifteen or twenty. Forty-five? No, twenty minutes before it was forty-five Dax knew Bashir was not coming. The excuse being not that he forgot exactly simply became absorbed. Taking a break just then not a priority compared to what he'd much rather be doing.

"Okay so it's not my imagination," Dax decided, troubled and slightly sad what with having decided just a few hours ago it was her imagination. Worf, on the other hand? No, Worf was not her imagination anymore than she was his.

"Makes sense," Dax voiced what she was thinking when Bashir scooted out from working on Lange's inventory to shower, change and delve into Nadya as he had been longing to do.

"Yes," Kira understood what Dax was thinking behind what she was saying, agreeing and saying a few silent things herself under that affirmation. Things like not wanting anything said or discussed with Worf, the Chief, or anyone, until she had a chance to speak with Benjamin four long days from now. 

"Yes," Dax nodded. Understanding fully what Kira was saying, though not quite sure who anyone else might be -- Rom? She would probably be as inclined to discuss transporting the nine-year-old Maquis niece of Shakaar Adon to the _Defiant for medical treatment and care with Rom as she would be inclined to discuss it with the Chief. Julian might think of mentioning it to the Chief, though common sense would probably detour him from that also. Worf?_

She was breaking Kira's unspoken rule to an extent not long after Kira left to shower, change, and assume duty aboard the bridge, Dax presumed. She didn't break the rule deliberately, even consciously. She wasn't quite sure why she mentioned anything of the colony to Worf at all except Worf lingered behind in the science lab to where Julian, the Chief, and Kira left, Lange's extensive inventory transported in a stack of containers and field packs on the floor.

Worf picked up a random container heaving it down on the console next to the field pack she set down. 

"Yes, well, actually, wait a minute," Dax said before Worf confused what was already confused enough.

Worf huffed. She wasn't sure why he huffed. The container wasn't that cumbersome or heavy. If it wasn't for her, it couldn't be for him. He told her why he huffed. "What is this?" he insisted, having determined somewhere between the cargo hold of the Ark and the science lab aboard the _Defiant "this" was too much._

"Lange's inventory," Dax nodded.

Worf studied the container the size of a weapons locker.

"It is a weapons locker," Dax agreed.

"A Cardassian weapons locker," Worf assured.

"Makes sense," Dax said while Worf studied the other four containers of roughly the same size and weight. One that was identical in that it, too, was a Cardassian weapons locker, the other three slightly different in that they were Klingon.

"Lange's inventory," Worf repeated.

"You sound like Julian," Dax disclosed with a smile, flipping open her field pack and setting out an organized arrangement of mismatched specimen bottles and jars.

Worf bristled either at the name, the comparison, or the putrid shades of Lange's inventive color-coding system; Dax suspected it probably had little to do with the samples.

She was right. "I wish to resolve our differences," Worf informed her in a tone that was not conducive to resolving anything. An order, if it didn't quite make it to being a demand, an instruction. For a moment she wasn't sure what differences he was referring to and then she remembered. They had an argument, or Worf did. About Julian just prior to her departing aboard the Ark. Something to do about her being far too generous in granting Julian liberal room and opportunity to indulge himself in taking inappropriate liberties in either what he said, did, or what he simply inferred.

Something about her having obvious feelings for Julian after six long years of friendship with him, and one short one of marriage to Worf. "Shouldn't you be on the bridge?" Dax asked pleasantly. The turn on her heel slightly more emphatic as she headed to drop her uniform in for solid waste recycling and the sanctuary of the lab's sonic shower. Worf was waiting for her when she returned shortly. The containers shoved neatly into a corner, what field packs wouldn't fit on the main console piled up on the one next to it.

_Definitely Julian. Dax maintained in that regard, beginning to wonder where Julian was. Not that she didn't believe him when he confessed to wanting to spend some time in the Infirmary now that his medical banks were available; she believed him. She just also had this thought in the back of her mind that he would come by the science lab once showered and changed to drag her off to help him. They were a team, after all. This was a team project._

"Actually…" Dax said as far as Worf's insistence in being helpful. "You're really not?"

Worf grunted. A long and drawn out "Hmmmm."

"As far as any differences…" she nodded.

"Yes," Worf assured, "things cannot continue the way they are."

Dax wasn't quite sure what things he was referring to other than her admittedly open and close friendship with Julian that she continued to view as open and close, as well as a friendship regardless of the sudden path it had taken over the past…was it two weeks? She looked at Worf. Yes, it was two weeks since they left the station and she was admittedly stuck there. Not at the station but on the path her relationship with Julian had taken. What was she supposed to say? She looked away.

"These are issues that are important to me," Worf persisted, "that you, as my wife, have a responsibility to address -- "

"In some fantasy Klingon world perhaps!" Dax's attention whipped back to Worf, ignoring the rumbling of what Julian would call his primal growl kindled by the heat in her voice, inspired by her willingness to fight because to fight was good, to fight was fun, one breath away from making love.

"Dating to the time of Kahless!" Dax's stiff, powerful arm halted any advance, striking Worf like a hammer in his chest and holding him there; he paused to stare at it quizzically perplexed.

"But in this one," Dax said, "the real one, I doubt if even Gowron could hope to get away with that line."

"Chancellor Gowron has no mate," Worf reminded her of the Klingon ruler's status as an eligible bachelor.

"Well, maybe that explains why!" Dax pushed him away from her altogether to take a breath; she took one. Calmer, as firm, hearing herself say something like, "Most people would probably agree the best way to resolve differences is simply to view them as differences and go on from there…

"Not dredge them up," she nodded to his strong and puzzled face. "Yes? No?"

Worf was thinking about it. "I am Klingon," was his answer.

"Uuggh!" Dax's head hung with her frustrated, mangled groan. He was _not Klingon. He was Klingon by race. He was Klingon by heritage. He was something else by environment and upbringing: Terran. Terran-like. Terran-taught. Terran-trained. "That's not an excuse!" The uncharacteristic shrillness in her voice returned, desperation creeping in. She really had no idea what to say to him._

"Go, just go," she pointed toward the door. "Worf, I have work to do. Benjamin wants a report and just how possible do you think that is in four days? It's not. A preliminary, if we're lucky."

"Well, where is Bashir?" He demanded and that made a lot of sense when two minutes ago he was complaining about Julian and now he wanted to know where Julian was.

"In the Infirmary," Dax nodded. "You know he's in the Infirmary." He practically got the door for him when he left. "Uploading Nadya's medical screenings."

The name was familiar, from somewhere two weeks back in time, connected to Lange.

"Shakaar Nadya," Dax said though that was not the child's family name. It had to be her mother's family name. As strictly conservative as Elise was in her own way? It was definitely her mother's family name, as her daughter was definitely Shakaar regardless of her name. 

"You don't want to know," she shook her head at Worf's undecided interest. "You don't want to know -- there's at least one suspected mass gravesite," she told him that much not to be unkind or cruel. She really did want to know what he thought, hear his opinion, what he had to say. "There could be more, we don't know. Including a possible Klingon one -- "

"Klingon," he interjected.

"Yes, Klingon. No one survived Khitomer? Well, not too many survived Dyaan IX," she referenced the historical Romulan slaughter of the Klingon outpost Khitomer, drawing a parallel though the numbers were less possibly, though not by much. The horrifying event equable in that the entire population was quite literally and ruthlessly annihilated.

"Anar is somewhat inconsistent in his census and chronology of events," she told Worf. "Deliberately," she added as an afterthought. "Regardless, he told the truth. Somewhere around two thousand Bajorans died in the last of the Klingon attacks. Another thousand between the Rigelian plague and the first of… I don't know how many other battles," she pushed back her hair she had left loose following her shower, the subject truthfully very uncomfortable and disquieting. "Guesswork has as many as five thousand comprising his original troops with the unaccounted for two divided between the deserters and those killed in some Dominion fight."

"Why would Klingons attack a Bajoran colony?" Worf asked.

"They're Maquis," Dax reminded. "They're not Bajorans, they're Bajoran Maquis, or they were. Nadya's psychological crippling is the least of her concerns."

That last part was unfair and untrue in that it alluded to some dire physical injury at the hand of some Klingon rather than only the loss of an ear. Nadya's extensive physical injuries and illnesses were indisputably a direct result of her family's involvement in the Maquis.

Worf nodded without knowing that, disturbed by the grimness of the report but understanding. "If you sleep with targs -- "

"'You'll wake up with glob flies!'" Dax completed the Klingon proverb that stressed the importance of focus on that which is meaningful rather than frivolous. "They didn't wake up! There's something meaningful in that."

Worf nodded. "And meaningless in the ideals of the Maquis. They are not warriors, but cowards, preoccupied with the thoughts of cowards. Promoters of anarchy, attacking all who disagree with them. Federation, Cardassian, Klingon, Bajoran. That is absurd and wasteful. We cannot all agree, as we should not all disagree."

"Anar also told the truth," Dax said for whatever reason, she had no idea. To frighten him? Force him to remain removed from the colony and hence her and Julian? "When he said he would strip and flail your skin and wear it as a robe; he has one. Not a robe, perhaps, but yes, a throw." The stripped flesh of a Klingon, like one would strip a targ, tossed over his makeshift bed of many mats beside the wall decorated with its Klingon bat'telh in his quarters in the Town Center. She knew Julian hadn't realized that, he would have said something. She wondered if Kira had, having an idea Kira did with less remorse and notice than Worf had for the Bajoran Maquis.

"An angry animal," Worf answered.

"Very angry," Dax agreed. "Though I wouldn't call him an animal." Simply a man who could be and had been extremely unpleasant at times, something else he had told the truth about. How odd Julian should realize that beyond her for all his bouts of anxiety and angst and her with her calm and wise serenity. Understand without the visual evidence what was going on inside Anar's mind from the ferocity of his anger to his concerns surpassing Lange to Nadya's eventual encounter with Worf. 

"Trying times," Worf identified the prevailing mood and situation facing their landing party for a week.

"In that way, yes," Dax agreed. "Cold and dark at others."

"I will let you work," Worf consented to her earlier request.

"Thank you," Dax said.

She worked for several hours on Lange's inventory, planning to work for a short while longer on her journal for Benjamin, elaborating on some new thoughts surrounding Anar's inexplicable friendship with Anon and Pfrann Dukat. Curious as to why Julian didn't happen by, determining he was absorbed and deciding to pop in on him if he hadn't appeared by the time she ran dry in detailing her retrospective impressions.

"All right…" she said several moments later after failing to locate her duffel that she knew was right there and really couldn't be too many other places.

"Wait a minute," she tugged aside Worf's strategic barricade of containers blocking the corner to see if he had inadvertently stuffed it behind them thinking it was just another catch-all for Lange's collection. Worf hadn't, any more than the Chief or Kira had accidentally walked off with it. That only left Julian. She tried to remember if Julian had anything in his hands, or swung over his shoulder when he left. She seemed to remember he had something, but that was earlier in the shuttle bay. A field pack. She started to laugh but only because she couldn't see him unintentionally ordering a transport for three duffels instead of only two.

"Location of Doctor Bashir's quarters," she activated her com badge. She was there three minutes later and wrong. There were only two duffels in Julian's cabin, both of them his.

"All right…" Dax thought over what she had been thinking, hating to trouble the computer with such a trivial request, but something was nagging at her, suddenly remembering she saw her duffel when she turned for the showers while in the science lab with Worf.

"How dare you…" she burst through the door of her cabin, furious, considering Worf's action of taking her duffel invasive and intrusive regardless of what he considered hers.

He considered them uncharacteristic and unusual as he had considered them and the intonation of her voice in the science lab. What that meant? He was undecided. She was abrupt for a woman who had not seen her husband in ten days. She was now extremely angry at finding her duffel in her own quarters. Worf rose to a straightened seated position on the lower bunk where he had been sitting back reading a data padd.

Dax assumed it was her journal and snatched it away from him. It wasn't her journal and since it wasn't she wasn't interested in what it was she flung it aside.

"Four thousand Klingons died at Khitomer," Worf began with that.

"I don't care how many died," Dax sputtered before she stopped to demand, "What?"

Worf nodded stiffly. "You are angry with the wrong man. I did not kill the Bajoran Maquis."

Dax groaned. "I'm not angry with you because of the colony, I'm angry with you because you took my duffel!" She kicked it with her foot, hard, to drive her point home.

Worf resumed being puzzled. "It is your duffel."

"I know it's my duffel," Dax assured, tearing open her duffel and yanking out her journal for Benjamin to wave in his face. "I told you I wanted to work. What do you think this is?"

"A data log," Worf agreed.

Dax stared at him. "What?" she demanded.

"A data log," he said, just like that. Unemotional and serious.

"Oh, you are impossible," Dax accused. "Yes, you are. Move. Just move. Will you move?" she insisted when he sat there.

Worf stood up. When he did, she sat down; why, she didn't know. He proposed a reason for her. "You are tired."

"Yes," Dax admitted. "Yes, I'm tired." Feeling her arms tightly crossed in front of her hugging each other, refraining from saying let him hike twenty miles a day, every day, in the cold, the wet, the sludge. Argue, fight, cajole, as necessary, when necessary. "It was exhausting," she nodded.

"Yes," Worf said.

"It was just supposed to be a field expedition," she looked up at him almost innocently, confused, trying to remember when, why and how it had turned into being so much else. "We didn't even have any heat the first four -- five -- however many days!" she gestured wildly and exasperated. "No toilet half the time, no shower the other!"

She was starting to exaggerate, confuse the night and days she spent in the town or out at the grotto with the days and nights she spent aboard the shuttle. "So, yes, I'm tired," she nodded. "I'm very tired." She laid down, first just on her back and then over on her side with her back to Worf. His hand touched her shoulder and she jumped up like she had been slapped. 

Worf eyed her. Dax sat back down under his scrutiny that continued to be unsure, only knowing that something was not quite right even if it wasn't quite wrong. She wanted a cup of tea for some reason when she looked away from him to stare at the wall. She sighed eventually and looked back with the acknowledgement, "I am angry with you because you are wrong about Julian…which," she had to admit to be fair, "is only fair I suppose because Julian is wrong about you."

Worf nodded, satisfied. "It is as I have suspected."

"What?" Dax requested politely. "What is as you have suspected?"

He was eyeing her again, silently. Knowing she wasn't telepathic or even empathic like his long-time friend Deanna Troi of the _Enterprise whom Dax had never met, though she had met Counselor Troi's mother Lwaxana, as they all had. As everyone in the galaxy probably had at some time. The UFP's flagrant and outrageous Betazoid Ambassador who was everyone's nemesis in ways, and definitely everyone's friend; it didn't matter. Dax didn't have to be Deanna Troi or her telepathic all-knowing mother Lwaxana, she knew Worf. She was married to Worf; he was her husband. She loved him, and loved him still, simply in a very different way than she loved Julian and that was where she was freely willing to admit she had gone wrong. Nothing to do with Curzon. Everything to do with her, Julian, and yes, Worf. Who suspected or believed he knew what?_

She studied him even though she didn't really have to. They had had an argument and she had told Julian of the argument, Julian, naturally supporting her. They went to a colony where two thousand Bajorans had died, massacred in a Klingon attack. It angered her, troubled her, and Julian fed the anger, citing it as another example of Klingon brutality, violence, an entire Empire living on the lunatic fringe, as he called it, devoid of any feeling, caring, or appreciation for life. Worf was right. That was what happened. What Julian said, believed, and would continue to believe until the Klingon Empire became Terran, or at least Federation in its outlook and practices. Something that chances were was not going to happen in his lifetime.

"Fine," Dax stood up, "don't answer me." She reached for her duffel to secure her journal for Benjamin, remembering she had already pulled it out and finding it on the bunk. Worf didn't stop her until she turned for the door.

"Doctor Bashir is your friend, not mine," he capsuled the situation and what he was thinking.

"That's true," Dax agreed after a pause to consider the implications of what he was saying, thinking of the Chief who could be said to be Worf's friend, not hers. However O'Brien also had no cause, or ever maliciously strove to undermine her to Worf or anyone, Worf's accusation and belief surrounding Julian. Worf was right. Malicious was a little harsh perhaps, but Julian definitely had an agenda when it came to Worf and her. On the other hand…

"Garak," Dax said. Garak was the perfect example and parallel. "Garak is Julian's friend, not O'Brien's, who's Julian's friend, not Garak's. I'm Quark's, who's no one's."

She was looking directly at him. "I'm Kira's, and I absolutely loathed Bareil -- who knew," she nodded. "Yes, Kira and Bareil both knew…and," she smiled, confident and wise, "I'm not so sure what you actually think of Kira. I'm not so sure what Kira actually thinks about you.

"I'm not so sure you would have liked Bareil." Not that it mattered because Vedek Bareil, Kira's one-time serious love interest, was long dead. Three years? Almost four. A passive-aggressive man. Soft-spoken, saintly, and domineering. A stubborn idealist. A pensive philosopher. A _wicked spring ball player, Dax laughed. Stopping with what caused her to dislike Vedek Bareil Antos most of all. A lacking appreciation, respect, and interest in Kira's status, position, and ambitions. Who did that sound like? Anar. Simply more honest in his advice that one not confuse the robes of a Town Elder with the robes of a Bajoran monk. Possibly the defining factor in what caused her to like Anar rather than dislike him, his honesty._

Though, no, if such things were up to her she would not choose Anar as a mate for Kira, any more than she would have chosen or encouraged Kira's association with Bareil. For a diversion? Yes. The Anars and Bariels were perfect diversions. They were not mates. More than seven lifetimes of accumulated wisdom -- ten, if she truly wished to disclose her age -- supported her in that belief, much more. Dax was notoriously not a mate, only with his host. Though Jadzia had to acknowledge the idea of a mate personally intrigued her in that it was a theory and premise she wished an opportunity to explore, had chosen to explore with Worf. Now, she wasn't so sure why she had done that, regardless of what Julian said about Curzon exerting too much control and she wanted time to think about it.

"Differences," Worf was saying.

"Yes," Dax was nodding. "Think about it."

She left with an encouraging pat on his chest to sit in the _Defiant's abbreviated version of a lounge with its single expansive window and view of space. A strictly Federation feature in this joint Federation-Romulan venture deemed the __Defiant. Romulans held little interest in crew lounges. In the power of the craft? Oh, yes. The advancement of technology with the successful integration of Federation and Romulan technology, complete with the workable application of a Romulan cloak; that worked. Most of the time. It gave the Romulan Star Empire an edge in that it gave them experience and knowledge in areas otherwise held in reserve. It gave the UFP the same edge for the same reasons. It was an odd marriage with a unique and powerful offspring._

Dax doodled on her report for Benjamin, meditating on what was actually distracting and disturbing her, Julian. His distance. Predicting an outpouring of anxiety, angst, pathos, she didn't know what else he fairly promised as a culmination to the week's end only that it didn't happen. He withdrew instead of achieving new heights of hysteria. She should have known better. Given his erratic mood swings over the week? She definitely should have known better. Julian was histrionic, melodramatic, emotional, and anticipatory.

"And," Dax sighed out loud, "this is ridiculous." Julian hadn't withdrawn any more than he had suffered some self-inflicted emotional collapse. It was her imagination. He was involved, extremely involved in Nadya and wanting to be truly involved. The extensive medical banks of the _Defiant were his chance to explore the theories floating around inside his head and prepare his defense for Benjamin should Kira's prove insufficient._

Kira's would never prove sufficient in Julian's opinion. This time around, Dax suspected, to where Julian had begrudgingly accepted Benjamin's "No" in accompanying Lange to Cardassia Prime, he was not going to accept "No" in returning to Dyaan IX. It should be an interesting reunion with Benjamin. She wasn't quite sure if she was looking forward to it or not, having an idea Benjamin would probably not be if he knew what was coming, which Benjamin did not know. She recalled what she wanted to say about the trio Anar, Anon and Pfrann that had a fourth as interesting player. The towering, aging giant Cardassian, Chief Engineer Tan who hailed from Dukat's era as Cardassian Prefect of Bajor and probably before.

_Two old soldiers. She wrote to Benjamin. __Neither of whom have anything to prove to each other. In retrospect, if there is a friendship Anar wishes to keep to himself it is the one with Tan. Never more evident than during the Chief's hearing if you think back. Tan was obedient to what had to be Anar's offsite instructions, as he was obedient to Sian. Generally amused I would say otherwise. As I would say the association between Tan and Anar was most strange if it wasn't for General Martok and Enabran Tain. The Klingon Empire's top military officer and Cardassia's former Intelligence Chief? I realize the circumstances under which Martok and Tain met were extraordinary but so were the circumstances here, with the outcome primarily the same. Whatever Martok and Tain saw in each other, Anar and Tan apparently saw the same thing…"If that's not enough to convince you," she laughed suddenly, "there's always that Klingon throw." Of which Tan had to know about, of which Tan had to give marked and amused approval._

_These are brutal men, Benjamin. She began her conclusion there. It was a short one since she was tired, though satisfied that she had communicated her point. She resumed doodling, curling up and resting her head on the cushioned arm of the reasonably comfortable chair, preoccupied with Julian and Worf. They were not two-dimensional characters from some trite literary work. They were not some eternal triangle. They were not anything._

Several hours later she was sitting in the commissary thinking through what she had determined to be her imagination and wasn't. From there it was an interesting, informative, and lonely four days. She saw Julian perhaps a handful of times. Always pleasant, friendly, jocular, as obviously and distinctly removed from her without explanation, without a word. Offhand and casual under his smile, evasive with his distracted attention and darting eyes, and that was all so typical of him, all so familiar.

  


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Welcome back," Sisko greeted his returning senior staff at the airlock, a secret behind his smile and dancing amusement for the squabbling Kira, Bashir, and O'Brien who emerged, tripping over each other's heels to continue their verbal wrestling at the engineering console.

"I'm transporting it," O'Brien assured, physically the largest of the three even if he may not be the strongest; they would still have to go through him to stop him.

"No, you aren't _transporting it," Bashir corrected, verbally the loudest and most emphatic. "I beg to differ, but you aren't just __transporting it."___

"Will you just listen to him?" Kira gave O'Brien a wallop in the diaphragm, needless to say the most physical, upsetting the Chief's late lunch and aggravating his annoyance.

"Miss us?" Dax smiled at Sisko amazed with the minor commotion.

  


"Oh, yes," he acknowledged tentatively. "Quiet without you…What are they doing?"

"Lange's inventory," Dax nodded.

"This isn't?" he indicated the field pack she held, assuming that it was.

"Well, they're field samples," Dax agreed. "But no, not exactly." She took him by the hand to show him what she meant.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa!" O'Brien snapped to attention in an effort to prevent Dax from involving Sisko; he failed. She vanished through the airlock with Benjamin and he cracked Bashir painfully in the arm. "Now, you see what you did? Satisfied? You got the Captain all riled up for no reason; repeat, no reason."

"Ow," Bashir rubbed his arm with an annoyed glare. "Yes, I see that, and good, maybe now you'll listen -- though he hardly seemed riled to me -- he seem riled to you?" he solicited Kira, really not anxious to have the Captain in a sour mood before he had a chance to speak with him.

"Will you just…the two of you," Kira pushed him aside and took off on a fast walk down the airlock after Dax and Benjamin.

"After you," Bashir gestured for O'Brien to proceed.

"Uh, huh," O'Brien gave him a gesture. His hand folded in a fist, drawing Bashir's attention to the knuckles and invisible words written across them. "Your name, got it? Your name. One of these days. I'm telling you, one of these days."

He bulled into the airlock, Bashir behind him mimicking, "One of these days."

"You think I'm kidding?" O'Brien challenged with a bark for the computer "to hit the pavement for the science lab" whatever "hit the pavement meant" as they crowded into the turbolift.

"No, I don't think you're kidding…" Bashir replied with an uneasy glance over Worf silently joining them, not that he had any reason to feel uneasy; he didn't. "I think you're mad," he smiled at Worf. "A bear, been a bear for what? The last week?"

"Four days," O'Brien corrected. "Four _long days, and I've been a bear, yeah, right."_

"You have been," Bashir nodded.

"And you've been what? A regular sweetheart?"

"Well, I've not been anything," Bashir denied. "Can't see where I've been anything."

No more than the Captain was riled to find his science lab looking remarkably similar to a cargo hold and that was after four days of intensive organization.

"This is Lange's inventory," Dax introduced them. "Most of it, anyway."

"Indeed," Sisko's brow crinkled in astonishment. "Most, you say."

"Impressive?" Dax verified first.

"I would have to say yes," he assured.

"Good. Then you'll understand when Julian and I confess we're only 80% finished with the initial cataloging and gross analysis; your report is more a sketch at this point is what I'm trying to say."

"I understand, Commander," he nodded, "completely."

"Good," she took him by the arm to steer him back out into the corridor and down to his Infirmary and the rest of Lange's inventory. These particular samples forgotten and set to the side with Julian yet to make a decision if he felt they needed to keep them. But that was nothing Benjamin needed to know and so she didn't mention it.

Bashir did, after he first alerted O'Brien to the Captain's mood. "Well, riled, obviously not."

"Lucky you," O'Brien snorted.

"No, lucky you," Bashir assured, quickly making his way after the Captain and Dax to join them in the Infirmary. Tripping over Kira in the doorway and assuring her "Will you!" that he was trying to.

From there skating smoothly into the spotlight and Dax's monosyllabic conversation with the Captain with an attention-getting rata-tat of his fingers on the field pack Sisko was busily admiring. Or inspecting. Or whatever it was he was doing, it really wasn't relevant.

What was relevant were the samples and Bashir's unintentional, though unavoidable neglect. "Most unintentional," he informed Sisko. "Unfortunate. However, rather than potentially risk jeopardizing the remaining assortment to the same fate -- as you can see, far more extensive than this particular lot…"

"I can, Doctor," Sisko reassured. "All understandable as I've said."

"Yes it is," Bashir agreed. "As I can at least define the gross contamination experienced to be due to a kingdom of multicellular fungi, largely saprophytes and generally asexual."

"Are they," Sisko said, planning on having dinner shortly and from the sounds of that rather hoping Bashir would delay in relinquishing them for solid waste recycling until sometime later in the evening.

"Definitely," Bashir asserted. "Interesting unto itself, I agree. Therefore we shall be submitting them to a few random screenings to insure it is not part of the natural process before eliminating them from the study."

"Reasonable, Doctor, yes," Sisko concurred. "Congratulations are in order."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, joint congratulations I would think being as Dax has had as much to do with all of this as I…exerted a similar effort…" He was starting to feel a little warm around the collar. Really not trying to take credit where credit was not due, that was not the point at all. "Probably much more so."

"Congratulations as well, Commander," Sisko's head tipped in appreciation to Dax.

"Absolutely," Bashir supported. "And, well…" he said with a nonchalant check of his watch since that was the reason why he was standing there spouting off the top of his head words he seemed to recall Dax mentioning two or three days ago when she first brought the samples to him. "1800 now…shall we say ten to go over…well, our sketch as Jadzia calls it?" he smiled.

"10-hundred should be fine, Doctor, yes," Sisko imagined, mentally checking his morning schedule that already included a planned meeting with Bashir and Dax.

"10-hundred…" Bashir repeated. "Oh, no, I'm sorry, I meant 2200. Ten o'clock.This evening," he clarified to Sisko shaking his head. "Why no?"

"There's no reason to trouble yourself unnecessarily, Doctor," Sisko said. "Tomorrow morning will be more than sufficient."

"It is no trouble," Bashir said. "None at all. That's what I'm saying -- "

"And he said no," Kira impatiently pushed him aside with a brisk, business-like nod for Sisko. "Have a few minutes?"

Sisko smiled. "Possibly a few more."

"Good," Kira said. "There are a few things I'd like to talk with you about."

"Reasonable," Sisko accepted, distinctly interested in meeting with her as well. "What are you doing for dinner?"

"Huh?" Kira said, with which Bashir wholeheartedly concurred. It was a remarkably odd question.

However, the Captain explained his reasoning fairly nicely, mentioning something about his son Jake being home from his literary seminar, and also about Kassidy Yates being aboard. Eager and anxious to try out a new delectable culinary wonder on Ben and Jake, an experience Kira was invited to share.

"Oh," Kira said, never more in demand as a dinner companion than she had been over the past two weeks and apparently that trend was going to continue, at least for this evening. "Well, all right."

"Excellent," Sisko gestured for her to accompany him. "Shall we say 1900?"

"1900?" Kira's face contorted. "Kind of early, isn't it?"

"It will give us time to talk," Sisko offered lightly.

"And him something to do other than be underfoot," O'Brien chortled, his elbow catching Dax in the ribs as the Captain and Kira left. "How much do you want to bet he's under orders?"

"To stay out of the kitchen," Dax understood. Reasonable. She just wasn't buying it. "What's going on?" she smiled back.

"Huh?" O'Brien blustered immediately. "What do you mean what's going on? How the heck do we know? We've been with you."

The _we was interesting."What's going on?" Dax turned her smile to Worf._

"We have been with you." He reiterated about as believable as you got it, no one. O'Brien groaned.

"Whatever. Worf's not telling you either because there's nothing to tell."

"I like the not," Dax nodded.

"You do, huh?" O'Brien said. "Okay. Make it a _can't. How's that? Like that even better? He __can't tell you. The same as I __can't tell you. Because if there's anything going on we don't know anything about it any more than you-- come on," he clouted Bashir with his head tipped and his mouth opened. "Wake up. He invited her to dinner, he didn't ask her out on a date. You've got ten minutes to make my life as miserable as you possibly can and then I'm going home to my own wife, to my own kids -- "_

"Kassidy's not his wife," Bashir shook his head as if that meant something; it didn't. Kassidy Yates, while she may not be Benjamin Sisko's wife, was certainly a significant figure in his life.

"No, but Keiko is mine," O'Brien assured. "And she's here, yes, she's here -- I guess. I'd like to find out before my anniversary. So where do you want them? It? This one? That one? Whichever.I'm telling you ten minutes, that's all."

"Oh," Bashir glanced down on the field pack. "Well, I imagine the science lab."

"Okay, I got that. It's in the Infirmary, but now you want it in the science lab."

"Well, there really is no reason to put it in the medical lab."

"I'm not arguing," O'Brien said, "I'm just asking. Where do you want this one?"

"The science lab," Bashir said. "Actually, you may as well put everything in the science lab."

"Everything," O'Brien repeated. "Everything," he looked at Worf.

"Yes," Bashir said.

"Kill him for me," O'Brien instructed Worf, "because if you don't, I will. Forty-five minutes -- "

"It wasn't forty-five minutes," Bashir corrected. "It wasn't the point of transporting. It was how you were planning to transport them -- "

"Shut up," O'Brien suggested. "Just shut up."

Bashir couldn't shut up. He was trying to but for some reason the air seemed to be incredibly filled with words like _wives, mothers, lovers. Dinner, dates, murder. "Eighty percent, really?" he surrendered to asking Dax. Mainly because she was standing there, close, like a shadow. "That is impressive. I don't think I realized…" he hesitated, wondering if she noticed. "You must have spent a rather significant amount of time."_

"Enough," she smiled.

"Yes," he smiled as well. "And, yes, apologies are probably in order, though I have been rather busy -- "

"How are your simulations coming?" she inquired.

"Reasonable," he said. "Much more so if I had a complete genetic mapping…" he caught Worf's eye looking at him, or perhaps Worf wasn't looking at him. It probably wasn't worth the risk in finding out. "Which I will," he concluded.

"Yes," Dax nodded. "Nice try, by the way."

"Oh, you mean Captain Sisko," Bashir answered after a moment. "Yes, well, I tried I suppose is what counts."

"Kira will take care of it," Dax trusted.

"It's not like I don't have anything to do," Bashir agreed, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the field pack the Chief was trying to pry out from under him for some reason; transport probably. He could hear O'Brien in the background of his mind growling and barking over his com badge at Rom.

Dax laughed. "Survey your own kingdom."

"Kingdom?" Odd thing for her to say. Almost as odd as Captain Sisko inviting Kira to dinner. He had to agree with her there; something was going on, more than likely something to do with Shakaar. Their Shakaar, not the Maquis' Anar.Though it still seemed somewhat uncharacteristic of Captain Sisko to resort to wining and dining his Second in Command in an effort to soothe whatever seizure Kira was apt to have over whatever was going on.

"The Infirmary?" Dax was cueing him to the nature and location of his kingdom.

"Oh, " Bashir said. "Sorry, what was I thinking? Yes, certainly, the Infirmary. I was planning on stopping by; I am planning on stopping by, naturally. Are you sure you don't mind, I mean about the science lab? There really is no reason -- "

"No, I don't mind," she shook her head.

"You're a sport," he meant that sincerely.

"And you really are a pretty decent liar," she meant that as well.

"Liar…" he stared at her, into her actually, through her.

Dax smiled. "Now, how do you know they're saprophytes?"

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, they're either that or parasites."

"Or symbionts," she nodded.

"Except I thought you said they were saprophytes," Bashir frowned.

"No," Dax shook her head. "I didn't say anything. I just brought them in. _You said," she poked him jokingly in the chest, "they were probably saprophytes."_

No, he said _I love you. He meant that. Wholly and completely. He had also said that. Madly, by this point. He hadn't yet said that; he didn't think. He looked away, at the Chief propped up on his elbow._

"I'm just waiting," O'Brien waved. "Just waiting."

"All right, all right," Bashir agreed with a grin for Dax, picking up the selected field pack of contaminated samples and heading for the exit; the corridor; the airlock; the Promenade; the station's Infirmary. He wasn't quite sure how much further away from her he could get unless he took a runabout and left altogether; neither was she. "Ten-hundred? Should be able to at least give them a look by then, you're right. Meet…0900? Medical lab? Probably doesn't even have to be that early. Nine-thirty should be sufficient. Anything else…well, anything else, I imagine, you've entered into the data banks, or you will; I'll find it; figure it out."

He was gone. Five minutes later dropping the field pack down on his desk in his office, himself in his seat, resting his head in his hands.

"Madness," Bashir pronounced the entire situation to be. "This is truly madness." He checked his vital signs deciding his blood sugar was low, it was early, the Infirmary quiet, he just returned from his field assignment, not yet on duty, or even on call, only as far as being the Chief Medical Officer; he left for dinner and Quark's. Rudely brushing past a floral of perfume with straw blonde hair, mauve lips and charcoal-blue eyes attempting to say "Welcome back."

"Or maybe not," the perfume shrugged and wafted away.

"Who's that?" Bashir asked, pausing briefly in his flight to turn around with a frown and turn back to fall into the arms of his evening charge nurse Michelle Faraday. A professional looking woman, older, wiser, and extremely soft, both in her manner and to land on.

"Your new resident?" Michelle jovially removed him from her uniform. "Relax. She's here for six weeks."

"I don't care how long she's here," Bashir assured. "Who is she? What new resident? I don't know anything about a new resident -- Why?" he demanded, "is she saying hello to me when I don't even know who she is?"

"Alexis Ortiz?" Michelle nodded as if that should mean something to him; it didn't.

"Get rid of her."

"Rid of her?" Michelle repeated.

"Yes," he insisted. "I don't care what you do with her, or how you do it -- reassign her; jettison her off the station in an escape pod. Get rid of her. I'll be in Quark's."

"A good or a bad idea," Michelle agreed. She ogled Ortiz. A pretty girl, a young girl, bright enough Michelle supposed. Time would tell.

"Married?" Ortiz wondered what a lot of them her age wondered.

"Thirty-three years," Michelle answered what she always answered.

Ortiz frowned. "Oh, no, I meant -- Doctor Bashir, is it?"

"It is," Michelle helped herself to Ortiz's data padd. "Start your rounds yet?"

Dax actually felt a little sorry for Bashir when he left the _Defiant's Infirmary; he looked so uncomfortable._

"Two down," O'Brien hinted from behind her that she was the last of the three. "I know," he stopped her before she said anything about the method of transporting, "sequential."

"Well, I wouldn't call it sequential, actually," Dax smiled.

"No, just _orderly," O'Brien said. "Rom!" he hit his com badge._

_"Um, yup, right here," Rom answered__. "Right here."_

"Hold that pose," O'Brien directed Dax, hanging a pack over her shoulder and sticking the last one in her hand. "Rom?" he checked.

_"I'm here," Rom assured.___

"Then hit it," O'Brien said. "Commander Dax; Science lab -- the station. Not the _Defiant's, the station's. On her feet, __next to the console. Doesn't have to be on top of it, she'll take it from there."_

"You're such an engineer," Dax agreed, a moment later talking to him over his com badge. _"Perfect."_

O'Brien nodded. "Rom?"

_"Oh, yup," Rom said. __"I'll take it from here."_

"Perfect," O'Brien signed off with a look over Worf, aborted when his com badge sounded again; it was the Captain.

_"Chief?" _

"Right here," O'Brien rolled his eyes. "We're here; why? Is she?"

_"Oh, she's here," Sisko assured, not too excited. __"She's here. Major Kira and I are aboard her now -- bay four."_

"On our way," O'Brien promised with a crisp nod for Worf. "Get used to it, I'm telling you. Back one day, gone the next, that's just the way it works."

"Yes," Worf was beginning to see how this might be so as they exited the Infirmary for the turbolift, from there eventually shuttle bay four where the Chief surveyed the virgin runabout_U.S.S. Styx with a critical, though appreciative eye._

"Big; real big; nice. Why _Styx though?" O'Brien questioned Sisko's grin as he moved to look over an equally massive midsection, detached, and waiting to be fixed in place. _

"Why not?" Sisko asked.

"It's a ship, and I'm Irish," O'Brien said, "remember? Why didn't they just christen it _River of Dead and get it over with -- this it? The science module?"_

Sisko couldn't imagine what else it might be.

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "And you want this ready when?"

"Tomorrow," Sisko smiled.

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said to Worf after the Captain left with Kira and he called for a full engineering detail, which even then would be pushing it. "Like I said, here a day, gone the next. But, hey, at least your wife is talking to you. Mine? Who knows. But I guess I'll find out; maybe; tomorrow."

"Yes," Worf said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It was early for Quark's also. The glittering multi-level palace of entertainment dominating a central portion of the station's Promenade was just beginning to come alive. 

"Julian!" Garak's Cardassian eyes grew wide with delight. Greeting Bashir as he entered the bar like he had returned from life internment in some Cardassian mine rather than two weeks…where?

Garak had no idea, but he would love to know.He was dying to know. Hardly able to contain himself. But then in boastful compliment to Garak's six year career as the station's premier tailor and sole Cardassian resident following his exile from his home world for reasons which remained obscure, was a past spanning a decade or two as an Obsidian Order operant. Cardassia's premier Intelligence Organization prior to falling into ruin a year or so before the first collapse of the Union -- it was almost becoming an annual event by this point. All thanks to his former Eminence Gul Dukat, the Civilian Council before him, and the ineffectual Central Command before them, of which Gul Dukat was a life-long member, naturally.

However, for all the deep and hard feelings of resentment Garak might harbor, and he harbored many, he remained faithful to the world that had spurned him. Confident the Union would rise again, as it had risen…? Garak momentarily lost count as to how many times, distracted by the appearance of Bashir on a fast trot through the door.

"And stay there?" asked Quark, the station's premier Ferengi bartender/owner/business entrepreneur since the days the former Cardassian mining station first graced the skies of Bajor Prime. 

Garak ignored Quark to focus on Bashir in his distinctive Cardassian way, with the look that he maintained, the obvious interest, enduring Cardassian curiosity.

"The slobber, the drip, the drool," Quark cracked to Morn, the bar's premier bar stool. A cumbersome, lumbering alien, large and cuddly and amicably mute with a long, broad, chinless face and two hollow legs. "I thought the idea here was to be subtle?" he reminded Garak that what they didn't know about Bashir's and others' mysterious disappearance they could know with the appropriate mixture of tact and ingenuity.

"So, where were you?" he queried Bashir while the Cardassian tailor was busy sizing up his prey. "The attention you've got -- free, I might add. The drinks are not. I don't care how good is good, it's not that good -- especially since," he tipped Bashir off, "we already know how, and we already know who."

"No, I know who," Garak advised Bashir with a smile. After three weeks Quark was still trying to desperately place the face he knew he knew and failed to place despite his boasts to the contrary.

"Okay, fine, don't tell me," Quark shrugged. "I've got a brother who's got a wife who works for me who'd like to keep her job. Do you really think I need you?"

"He does," Garak assured Bashir. "Not that I mean that as encouraging any form of extortion. I, for one, respect Captain Sisko's efforts to maintain a level of discretion, certainly best under the circumstances."

"Which, if you believe that, I've got an investment tip or two I'd like to sell you," Quark nodded.

"Actually, dinner would be fine." Bashir sat down with a tired, perhaps slightly distracted comb of his fingers through his hair, Garak noticed.

"Anyone ever tell you you're boring?" Quark tossed a menu up on the bar.

"Fine," Bashir said. "Make it dinner and a stardrifter. That exciting enough for you?"

"Touchy, too," Quark agreed with a not-too-subtle flick of his head for one of his league of erotic bar hostesses to stop taking in the scenery and do something constructive, like work.

"Tired," Bashir scrolled through the evening's selections, none of which seemed remotely appealing, that included the sensual and supple figure attempting to displace his mood. "Too tired for an interrogation…joking or otherwise," he excused himself out from under the clutches of his visitor. "I'm sorry, but as you can see this seat is taken."

"Viola," Quark made the introductions.

"Charmed," Bashir agreed. "However unless it's a medical emergency I'm not available."

"Sounds like an emergency to me," Quark nodded to Garak. "Okay, you purr, I'll pour. Between you, me, and the synthale we'll get it out of him."

"Stardrifter," Bashir corrected.

"Definitely get it out of him," Quark promised Garak.

"Except there's nothing to get," Bashir assured. "Commander Dax and Major Kira and I were on a field expedition, that's all. We had some trouble with our shuttle and the _Defiant had to secure us -- what?" he said to Garak ogling him like he was dinner. "It's true. Spent the last four days listening to the Chief argue about everything he and Rom did right and Kira and Dax did wrong -- which if that's right, Kira and Dax shouldn't have had to do anything. Surely I would be held accountable if I pronounced a patient medically fit for duty and they left the Infirmary to promptly drop dead on the Promenade. No, one can't foresee everything. However, one should be able to be reasonably confident in their life support systems before heading off into space. I'm not saying it was anyone's fault, I'm saying it was asking for trouble assigning us to the Ark. It's simply far too old, and therefore unreliable -- what?" he said impatiently to Quark. "I said I'm not blaming the Chief or Rom."_

"You tell a good one," Quark thumped his drink down in front of him.

"Yes," Garak approved with a comforting pat of Bashir's arm. "However, I can assure you, Julian, I do know who. If I didn't find it so amusing, I would be alarmed, disturbed, anyway…Which I do find it most amusing -- quite unlike Major Kira, one would presume," he hinted for Bashir's thorough and complete understanding that he really did know what he was talking about.

"That certainly narrows the prospects down, not," Quark snorted. "I've seen her crack a smile…come to think of it, I'm not sure if I've ever seen her crack a smile. Not even when they took Dukat out of here in his own handcuffs. I would have sworn I'd see one at least then. But what do I know?"

"You mean like General Martok and Enabran Tain?" Bashir countered to Garak, because he did understand what Garak was attempting to convey of how "unusual" would probably not be the way the galaxy viewed an association between Bajor's Shakaar and Cardassia's Gul Dukat, whether it be the two principals themselves, or merely their kindred.

"Enabran Tain?" Garak stiffened, of course he would. Enabran Tain was much more than simply Cardassia's former Chief of Intelligence, he was Garak's father. A man whose expectations Garak never lived up to no matter how much he tried, no more than he lived up to the man. "I fail to see what you're saying, Julian, I must confess, certainly about General Martok."

"You were there," Bashir reminded.

"Yes." On that Dominion asteroid, Julian no doubt referred to, with Martok and Tain,Mister Worf, and several other prisoners, Bashir among them. "So were you," Garak smiled. "Need makes for interesting unity, I must admit."

"Yes, need does," Bashir agreed, if he believed Jadzia's theory, because it was her theory, not his, that was the crux of the matter of friendship between Bajor's Anar and Cardassia's young Gul Dukat. The answer to the mystery. Need.

"How…romantic," Garak just simply said.

"Yes, that would be a fair description," Bashir sighed, thinking of something else. He eyed Quark. "Dinner?"

"Order?" Quark's knuckles rapped the padd.

"I don't care. Surprise me. Anything has to be better than some replicator."

"It is a replicator," Quark assured. "You want food, that'll be ten slips for the reservation and one level up. A little action, a little adventure, and some general fantasy? One up from there. The real thing? Last, but not least…and, okay, maybe not real," he admitted. "Real you can go to jail for. The holosuites they just make me shut down and turn back into storage."

"Since when?" Bashir insisted.

"What do you mean since when?" Quark snapped. "Since the Cardassians left and the Federation took over again. When do you think since when? Look, if I say it's storage, it's storage. To the back, down the end of the corridor, rear of the turbolift, two panels up, third from the left, remove it, it's false anyway; a real shocker, I know. Trust me, no one was more surprised than me. In the meantime, two hundred strips and magic. You're there, you're in, and you can check it out for yourself."

"No, I meant the reservation fee," Bashir shook his head. "Since when have you charged a fee?"

"For the restaurant? Since the Bajoran Maquis paid us a visit -- I know, I know," he waved, "they weren't the Maquis. Fine. They weren't Maquis, and it's not a fee. It's a cover charge to pay for the new and improved décor. But then, hey. You say renovations. You call it a mezzanine. I call it a hole in the middle of the floor where there was never a hole before at the cost of twenty-three tables, not happening…I know food, dinner," he assured with a bellow over his shoulder. "An order of parthas ala Yuta with a nestle of caviar; cheese cake with a slice of apple and a drizzle of uttaberry and apricot syrup wine -- what?" he said to Bashir's groan. "No good? You said to make it interesting."

"Interesting, yes," Bashir said. "I'm not pregnant."

Quark looked him up and down. "Well, if you are someone's got some explaining to do. That 'in surrogate' story's only good once. I've been in dozens of shuttle mishaps. Survived asteroid belts, time warps, you name it. A broken bone or two, I buy. A concussion, plasma burns, black eye. Waking up with my stomach grazing the ceiling? Uh, uh. Spots, ridges, brown, red, or blue hair, some little Julianna Bashir shows up six, seven, eight months from now, or however long you Humans take, I'm asking questions."

"Are you insane?" Bashir had a question of his own.

"Maybe," Quark shrugged. "If I am it comes from standing twenty years on this side rather than sitting on that one -- Okay, scrap the parthas ala Yuta and caviar and make it a Rueben!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Better?"

"Yes, much," Bashir nodded.

"In your opinion," Quark assured. "If I have to kill it before I eat it, I'm not eating it, and I'm especially not eating it if it's never been alive in the first place -- still want the cheese cake?"

"Yes."

"Keep the cheese cake!" Quark barked. "That way when he's in the toilet throwing up no one will have to ask why!"

"Not that it wouldn't be an inappropriate question, regardless," Bashir sipped his stardrifter as he turned around to survey Quark's gambling arena with a wanton eye. "As inappropriate as your and everyone else's apparent fetish with bodies and bodily functions."

"She is attractive, isn't she?" Garak simpered in his ear about Quark's latest edition Viola. "Somewhat less tawdry looking than her predecessor."

"And far more alive," Bashir agreed, "yes."

"Hey," Quark reminded from behind him. "The occupation's over, people have choices.It's hard enough to find them, keep them.I don't want to have to start worrying about any unnecessary details of job risk and finding yourself -- sliced and smeared between two pieces of bread," his stomach rolled with the presentation of Bashir's sandwich that looked far too much like seasoned flesh. "Are you really going to eat that? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that used to be somebody or some thing."

"Yes, I'm going to eat it," Bashir assured. "Take it to go, if you don't mind. It's no more been anything than anything else has ever been anything."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "That's what they like us to believe. Me? I'm suspicious. The minute someone starts talking food synthesizer, raw material and organic residue I automatically question yes? And? Meaning? From where? Who? What? I lost three waitresses. You want to take your chances you're not eating one of them be my guest. I'll stick to worms, insects, and an occasional plant or two like any other self-respecting Humanoid. To go, you said? Sounds like a deal to me."

He tossed a towel over the plate, garnishing it with the cheesecake. "Consider it and you gone. That'll be an extra ten-percent for take out. Another twenty for the rental of the equipment – non-refundable, I might add. What do I care if you bring it back? I'm still the one who has to put it in the replicator. And fifteen percent gratuity. But then, hey. Where else can you get service like this? Not too many places. Bon appetite."

Bashir left following pleading a temporary shortage in funds, added a macchiato to his order, and the total to his tab.

"It's okay," Quark called after him, "need I say what we don't eat we do sell to those who do…finally," he breathed a sigh of relief to Garak. "I don't know about you, but I thought he'd never leave."

"Except we didn't want him to leave," Garak smiled, "we wanted him to stay. How else do you propose we find out where Julian's been and where he's going? If not why? Surely Julian was our best avenue for information. Surely you don't think either Major Kira or Commander Dax are going to be cooperative, anymore than Mister Worf, Chief O'Brien, or Rom have been despite your threats to terminate Leeta."

"Surely you could have said something about this before," Quark mimicked.

"I did say something before," Garak nodded.

"And you have your ways, and I have mine," Quark assured. "I read Leeta's contract. She doesn't have inalienable rights to work here. I'm the only one who has inalienable rights because I own the place. I don't care what she says. I _can fire her. I __will fire her. My bar will survive and so will I…maybe," he sighed with a reach for his cane. "Who'd ever thought a shattered knee could hurt so much and take a week to heal? Not me. Something tells me I should be glad she missed and the floor broke my fall."_

Funny, but something along that very same idea crossed Dax's mind not ten minutes earlier when she wandered by the Infirmary to deliver the two field packs of contaminated samples that Julian had forgotten to take along with the one he had, and met Alexis Ortiz checking her profile in the main diagnostic display.

"Oh," Ortiz said, startled to find herself under the scrutiny of a six foot Trill rather than an almost six foot man. "Doctor Ortiz…Is this something I can help you with… Commander?" she quickly located Dax's pips, not difficult to do, plainly visible on her collar with her neat upsweep of sable brown hair. "Or is it Doctor?" she verified, the lighter blue shoulders of Dax's jumpsuit confirming science rather than medical but that didn't mean she couldn't be a doctor of something. She laughed suddenly. "Mud. Why do I get the impression of mud? It's not like you're dirty."

"Maybe because you're an empath?" Dax's nose wrinkled as it usually did when she was intentionally being pleasantly coy.

"Or maybe because those field packs have seen better days and far cleaner environments," Ortiz nodded with a reach and offer to give her directions and a hand.

"It's all right," Dax assured, "I know my way." She walked into Julian's charge nurse Michelle Faraday somewhat gentler than Julian had en route to the medical lab.

"Doctor Bashir?" Michelle interpreted the purpose of her visit.

"You read my mind," Dax smiled.

"Not too difficult to do," Michelle nodded, meaning the field packs.

"No," Dax agreed, meaning the blonde. "New staff member?"

Michelle's eyes rolled. "If you want to call her that."

"What else would I call her?" Dax wondered.

"I don't know," Michelle admitted. "Not been here long enough to know if she's good, bad…" she stopped, gossip really not her style.

It was generally beneath Dax as well. "Or knows her way around more than a mirror? I'm sure she knows her way around."

Michelle shrugged, understanding what Dax meant but sticking to her position of whether or not Ortiz did or didn't really not being her business. Keeping the boss happy and following orders was her job. "She's being reassigned."

"Reassigned?" Dax set her baggage down on the console, the lilt in her voice masking the murder she was planning in her mind. "That doesn't sound like Julian."

"Not his type," Michelle shrugged again, meaning Bashir's idea of a qualified physician and so, yes, she probably could have chosen a better way of saying so and probably would have if she wasn't as perplexed as Dax.

"Not his type?" Dax heard herself repeating again along with her laugh. "Definitely doesn't sound like Julian." At what? Five foot seven or so? One hundred and twenty-five to thirty pounds, close enough, in all the right places? Dax believed the expression was. Over twenty and under thirty, blue eyes and blond hair, no, reassigning Ortiz, or whatever her name was, definitely did not sound like Julian. It sounded like fear, guilt, desperately wanting to live to see his meeting with Benjamin at 1000, which wasn't very likely.

Dax moved on though, the protective look beginning to cloud Faraday's face suggesting it was probably wiser. "Where is Doctor Bashir?" she looked around the medical lab that was empty save for them and her two field packs.

"Quark's," Michelle passed off like it was expected and reasonable, and to her it was. Doctor Bashir was hardworking and dedicated and just returned from some dangerous excursion somewhere with every right and reason to unwind and relax the same as everyone else.

"Quark's," Dax wished she could stop echoing Faraday's words, straying away from thinking about Ortiz to thinking about the three entertainment hostesses brightening up the otherwise bleak and solemn morgue the evening of the terrorist attack. "Quark manage to fill his vacancies?"

Faraday snorted that time with a dismissive wave. "Darla, Starla, who knows, who cares, I just nod."

"It's probably safer that way," Dax smiled and left to stop at Ortiz diligently studying Julian's official Starfleet biography.

"Oh," Ortiz looked up from reading one of the more interesting excerpts about Julian's nomination for the prestigious Carrington Award despite his tender, though unmentioned age, at the time.

"Thirty-one, and he lost," Dax saved her the trouble of having to read the last page or doing further research. "You'll find Starfleet is as adamant about discouraging age and gender discrimination, as it is species."

"Which is why there's no mention," Ortiz nodded, aware. "As right we should be. A picture however is optional; I know. It took me forever to decide on mine; even with everyone's encouragement," she laughed. "But then it simply isn't true. I don't look beautiful no matter what."

Dax had to bite her tongue. "You know, I had that same difficulty," she said jokingly instead.

"Age sensitive," Ortiz agreed with another laugh. "Not you, Doctor Bashir. Silly, because he's fascinating no matter how old or young he is."

"Cute, too," Dax supported.

"Definitely," Ortiz assured. "Here I was afraid I would die of boredom -- what _do you people do for…well, to keep your sanity, quite frankly? Excitement really would be reaching, wouldn't it?"_

"Have you seen the Promenade?" Dax asked curiously, not meaning to suggest Ortiz hadn't lived until she had.

"Yes," Ortiz groaned. "Pathetic, you're right. Unless you like screaming five-year- olds and 100 year old grandmothers trying to look my age; twenty-five…"

"Actually I was thinking more of the entertainment facilities, rather than the restaurants or shops," Dax nodded. "Quark's, if no other…"

"_Or being ogled by middle-aged men, like I would even look twice in their direction," Ortiz assured. "I'm Doctor Alexis Ortiz, by the way, Doctor Bashir's new resident. Did I mention that?"_

"Which?" Dax requested.

"Either," Ortiz laughed; she laughed a lot, Dax noticed. As often and forceful as Janice Lange. "But then I also seldom give the competition the time of day, I'm sure you can understand that."

"Commander Jadzia Dax," Dax smiled. "Just so there's no misunderstanding."

"About?" Ortiz asked.

"The identity of your competition?" Dax offered. "Even though in my case I think you'll find it's more like a 400 year old symbiont trying to look…well, maybe not twenty-five," she acknowledged. 

"Early thirties, no more," Ortiz patted her arm reassuringly. "I was only teasing. I seriously doubt if we are in competition."

"Or you wouldn't be talking to me," Dax recalled.

"Exactly," Ortiz laughed. "But just in case I'm wrong it's only fair I tell you I may not have seen him first, but I have seen him now."

"Meaning?" Dax checked.

"Just that," Ortiz shrugged.

"Well…" Dax smiled, "on a departing note…"

"Yes, please," Ortiz agreed and left her standing there, but only because she caught a glimpse of Michelle watching from a respectable distance. "I'd love to stand around and chat but I am on duty…thanks for the recommendation though, if you want to call it that. Quark's, you said? The Ferengi bar? I wasn't impressed, but then I'm fussier than you are. It's all right, I don't mind giving it a second chance -- dig someone up, just anyone, I'm sure you'll have no trouble and we'll make it a foursome; who knows, it might even turn out to be fun," she set her padd down in Michelle's outstretched hand with a smile. "All living, all bored. Doctor Hamilton's in the lounge if you need her. May I go to dinner now, please? Or do you have some closets you'd like me to clean?"

"Go," Michelle waved. "But be back…" she instructed.

"An hour," Ortiz swore and took off, "or thereabouts…Great!" she caught up with Dax on the Promenade, midpoint between the Infirmary and Quark's with a startling and mildly painful yank of Dax's tight braid.

"Just me," she grinned as Dax grabbed protectively for her hair, whirling around to stare shocked at her assailant who had to be out of her mind."I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm glad to see you…"

"But I'll do," Dax lowered her hand.

"Yes," Ortiz said.

"How did I know you were going to say that?" Dax nodded tiredly.

"I don't know," Ortiz said. "How did you?"

"I don't know," Dax shook her head. "Apparently I just did."

"Well, maybe you're the empath," Ortiz shrugged.

"Just a Trill," Dax assured. "Still, I wouldn't advise you pull my hair ever again."

"Or what?" Ortiz laughed.

Dax did not. "Or I'll pull yours?"

Ortiz eyed her. "Why do I get the idea I probably wouldn't want you to do that?"

Dax smiled. "Why do I get the idea it's a choice between you're a smart young woman even if you don't care to act like one?"

"Or?" Ortiz prompted wickedly.

"I'm twice your size," Dax complied with a sigh.

"Easily," Ortiz grinned.

"Not quite," Dax assured. "But you're still right."

"Sounds violent rather than _wise," Ortiz taunted. "To think I was considering asking you to be my friend."_

"What?" Dax said.

"I'm not," Ortiz laughed her obnoxious laugh, in her obnoxious way. "Useful, maybe."

"Useful?" Dax said.

"All right, available," Ortiz groaned. "My God, you can tell you're a science officer."

"Well, that's not the only thing I don't understand," Dax replied. "Nor do I really care to. Now, if you will excuse me…"

"Humorless," Ortiz caught her by the arm. "You're humorless."

"I thought I told you…" Dax glanced at the hand.

"Not to pull your hair?" Ortiz smiled.

"Fine," Dax surrendered before she surrendered to murdering her before Julian rather than waiting until after. "What am I missing?"

"My humor?" Ortiz hinted.

"Except I don't find you funny," Dax shook her head. "I find you unprofessional and grossly immature; intentionally, I would think, for whatever the reason."

"Well, I don't like your hair," Ortiz countered. "I find it matronly."

"Did I mention rude?" Dax wondered.

"Unprofessional and immature," Ortiz shook her head.

"I meant rude," Dax assured. 

"Now if I could only manage to be unattractive…" Ortiz laughed. "True or false?"

Dax just closed her eyes after she finished staring at her again. "Yes, of course. What was I thinking? We're in competition."

"Are we?" Ortiz asked bluntly.

"I would have to say…" Dax briefly considered saying no, truly believing for a moment, no. But as if on cue Quark's shapely Leeta, stunning in glittering purple gauze, picked then to scamper past them on her clicking, spike heels with a hasty, breathless "Hello!" and hearty tug, shift, fluff really, of her ample and heavily exposed bosom.

Dax smiled. "Actually, I would have to say it's probably a lot more fun to leave you guessing…that was Leeta, by the way, in case you're wondering. A close and long-time friend of Doctor Bashir's. So see? Just when you thought you only had me to be concerned about, come to find out we're all around you."

"You said concerned," Ortiz corrected, ignoring the warnings and taking her by the arm. "I call it recognizance. Come on. We can be each other's cover."

"Cover…" Dax reacted in spite of herself.

"You're halfway there," Ortiz pointed out. "We'll just go together…Quark's," she huffed to Dax's frown. "I heard Michelle tell you Doctor Bashir is in Quark's."

"I'm not going to Quark's," Dax assured.

"Well, it certainly looks like you are," Ortiz nodded.

"I don't care what it looks like," Dax firmly removed the woman's hand from off of her arm. "Play time's over, Lieutenant. I suggest you get back to work before Doctor Bashir returns…" She walked straight into him, almost. She turned away to exit down the Promenade, into the bulging crowd of tiring hungry travelers, tourists and residents, and suddenly he was right there, dodging his way around a large heavyset Bolian woman moving slowly in tune with her swaying collection of parcels.

"Julian…" she said, abruptly finding herself bounced aside by a pack of Ortiz's "screaming five-year-olds" who looked closer to ten, on a race past her to somewhere.

He ignored her. He heard her, saw her, she knew he did both. Sidestepping the caterwaul of children with a fleeting grin, to continue past her and on, managing his precarious balance of what appeared to be cheesecake, at least on top.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ortiz laughed behind her. Dax turned around to the giggling ruby grin and teasing smoky eyes. "Okay, so I was wrong; you're not lovers. You were just on a field assignment with Major…Kira, is it? What do I know?"

She counted to ten after that for some reason. Enlightening Dax to some theory about how some men really did not like to feel as if they were being chased, before she left on a casual stroll, not a run, back in the direction of what would eventually become the Infirmary. Dax left also, for Quark's. Where Leeta was on a rampage hollering about not being a maid, the color purple, being late, a manager, Rom, and Garak was dutifully attempting to arrange a date between Julian and a violet-haired Dabo hostess also attired in purple, though of a different shade than Leeta's. That explained Leeta's annoyance as it explained Julian's desire to abandon Quark's quickly after he arrived, collecting his dinner and returning to the Infirmary.

  


Either that or he hadn't intended to stay in Quark's, only there to get dinner. Anyone's guess was as good as Dax's and she decided to give up guessing, along with deciding to forego Quark's. Settling for dinner from the Replimat and returning to the science lab where she stared at the remaining nineteen percent of Lange's inventory waiting to be categorized for the next two hours before deciding it was ridiculous.

"It's ridiculous," Dax pushed herself away from the console to stand in the middle of the floor thinking about what was ridiculous, and that was the odd, strained twist her relationship with Julian had taken, one, for which she wanted an answer.

"A definitive answer," she packed up the field pack she had opened. "I want an answer."

If it was Worf, Nadya, something she had done, something Julian wished he hadn't, whatever it was, the _change of atmosphere from the planet to the __Defiant, the Ark to the __Defiant, she wanted an answer. She stopped in the doorway because if anything was ridiculous, marching into the Infirmary, the medical lab, or his office to demand an answer was ridiculous. Why didn't she just ask him in the middle of the Promenade? Remove herself from a physical confrontation entirely and just hail him over his com badge? She wouldn't. Though not because it would be so grossly inappropriate but because she knew the answer._

"No, I don't know the answer," Dax shook her head. "I don't." She knew what she thought was the answer and that was that it was just simply over. Whatever it was, whatever had happened. Julian had retreated. In a way, with a finality that he hadn't in a long, long time.

"I'm just so upset," Dax stifled a frustrated cry, brushing this one, loose, irritating wisp of hair away from tickling her forehead. This was all so completely unlike her and that was what was most confusing of all. "I'm upset," she insisted. Angry one moment, sad the next, and quite frankly just so tired of being so upset. 

She marched out of the science lab, not for the Infirmary, but for Bashir's quarters, to sit outside them if he wasn't there, until he came home. She was marching back in a moment later to snatch up the field pack she had repacked to give herself something to do while sitting _inside his quarters not outside, waiting for him to show up home. She was calmer in one way once inside the turbolift and more nervous in another. _

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Dax chided herself. "I can't believe I'm doing this!" she said incredulous. Julian said she was sick, and quite obviously she was sick. Emotionally stressed if she was nothing else, and whose fault was that?

"Julian?" she pressed the buzzer to his quarters, her voice pleasant and surprisingly calm. "Julian?" she called through the door's invisible seam, a feeling of déjà vu in the air.

A feeling confirmed when she attempted to override his security with her security and the computer told her she didn't have the authority unless it was a medical or station emergency. That was exactly what he did to her aboard the _Defiant when they first disembarked from the station to escort the __Tir to the Cardassian border._

"Oh, yes, I do have the authority!" Dax kicked the base of the door with a promise to return and left for the security office to borrow one of Odo's security bypass modules.

"Thank you!" Dax said as she swept in to sweep out.

"Anytime," Odo nodded, just presuming she got locked out of one of her Cardassian weapons lockers; he knew how frustrating that could be.

"Where were we?" Dax slapped the module in place on Bashir's door and twelve trials later (she was exaggerating, it was probably no more than six) she was still locked out. Obedient to the module's instructions, the computer still wanted a password to ensure the module was in the right hands. It didn't care if it was spoken, typed, or scrawled across the door, it wanted a password and it wasn't releasing its final hold on the lock until she gave it one; she tried. Simple things. Personal ones. Considering the request for an additional password was a secondary feature, this seemed to be the most logical. Things general villains, murderers, or thieves, wouldn't necessarily think of or know.

That, and Julian would probably just seek to be a little more creative (or silly) than the average officer with their alpha-mega-gamma security refrains. It wasn't a weapons locker after all, it was his personal quarters. So she gave the computer his father's name. His mother's. His birth date. The date of his graduation. The name of the first woman he ever dated, she had no idea who that was and so she just made one up, assuming he had dated someone by the name of Daria at some point in his life. 

She gave the computer _Melora. A woman she knew he had dated. __Leeta. Several more that she did know, and a handful that she didn't. She even gave it the security code __007 for his favorite holographic reenactment program._

She gave the computer everything she could think of in every conceivable combination including a few random standard choices and twenty minutes later (at least) she was still outside in the corridor.

"Julian!" Dax sat down cross-legged on the floor in disgust, her head in her hands, trying to think. "What do you have in there?" she demanded, that required a medical disaster to gain entry even though she didn't have to think about that. She knew what he had in there. Pharmaceuticals. Equipment. Confidential medical logs and files.

"Oh, no," she stared at the door suddenly thinking of the one thing she didn't know and if she did, she had forgotten; why wouldn't she? She was an adult. A science officer.

"Julian," she fell over with a groan to lie on the floor for a few minutes beside her field pack, thinking about what she hadn't thought of. The choice of personal simplicity wouldn't be for the villains, anymore than it would be for someone like her. It was a secondary lock, not a primary one. Possibly the only one he even used half of the time and in place along with all the formal primaries because he had been away from the station and hadn't yet returned to his quarters.

She sat up before someone happened by to find her lying there, understandably curious as to why. She got up because what she didn't know, or had forgotten, she did know someone who did.

"What's the name of Julian's teddy bear?" Dax borrowed Leeta away from her station at the Dabo wheel where she alternated between inspiring good luck and entertainment with her good looks and bright smile, and casting muttering angry glares at her violet competitor hosting the Chula board.

"Oh…" Leeta found Dax's question reasonable amidst the hub of the gambling pit and certainly confidential; she whispered the answer in Dax's ear.

"Really?" Dax said, it not sounding even slightly familiar.

"Yes. Why? Do you think you found him?" Leeta asked, eternally hopeful the bear's mysterious disappearance from her quarters two years ago might one day be solved.

"I have a lead," Dax crossed her fingers and left.

"_Now where were we?" Dax slapped the security bypass module back in place on Bashir's door. Seconds later she was inside where panic struck momentarily because she really didn't know if he was there and just refusing to answer her; he wasn't there. His quarters were quiet, cool, and semi-dark, relaxed and peaceful, waiting for him to come home. He had a very different style and taste than she did. Sleek, she would have to say, but not stark. So typically Terran with the generally related furnishings and limited decorations. So unlike her. Distinctly conservative in her appearance, usually in her manner, and so eclectic in her own right and lifestyle. Bohemian, by comparison to him who made a point of trying to look and be Terran society. Natural. Almost native. Almost Klingon. Simply less oppressive and overbearing in her style and tastes that still included the occasional monstrosity of an artifact or curio. Julian's words whenever he had been in her quarters on rare occasions, eyeing her repulsive collections with trepidation, touching them gingerly._

They were two very different people, Julian and she. She knew that. Yet for some reason she seemed to be focusing on it before moving toward his computer console. The room just appeared so very large perhaps? Open. Airy. Relaxed. More personally his than Benjamin's or the Chief's. More private. But then a family did not live there. No children. No mate with her own personality and tastes and hobbies commingled with or disrupting his.

In contrast, her quarters suddenly seemed to be so very crowded, confining, grisly, even though they weren't. Two people lived there not one, neither of them Terran. Julian hung a mirror for an accent piece, Worf hung his ritual painstiks for ancestral and ethnic pride. They were two very different men, Worf and Julian, beyond their markedly different cultures and quarters.

"We're all very different people," Dax set her field pack down on the console. All a study in contrasts between their lives and their loves. Worf with his music. Her with her literature and books. Benjamin with his extensive galley kitchen. Kira's soothing meditations and intensive athletics. She was thinking of hobbies. She wasn't even sure what Julian's hobbies were apart from the mental and emotional stimulation of his career on which he thrived. An occasional tournament of darts with the Chief, perhaps? It wasn't really competitive, only for the Chief, not with Julian's superior eye and hand coordination. 

A spring ball match with Kira? Also not truly competitive, except possibly for Julian's level of stamina and endurance. Superlative, superficial socializing then? Matching wits with Garak and/or some fantasy action-adventure holoprogram? Dyaan IX had been an adventure for the first hour or two, her mildly hostile environment challenging him physically. After that it was a nuisance. A week of cold, dark, and rain.

"Lies, love, blood, mud, and mutants," Dax smiled at Bashir's ancient and much-worn stuffed teddy bear. A fuzzy, cockeyed-looking little rascal sitting propped up, some might say, rather boldly on public display considering his reputed status of being MIA. 

"You're right," she promised the bear, "there's always blackmail," and got to work on sorting through and cataloging the field pack of samples. Entering them into the system file that Julian had yet to access, or so it read.

"Back already?" Michelle greeted Bashir in the door of his office to give him a hand balancing his dinner, macchiato, and the cumbersome field pack he had slung over his shoulder.

"Couldn't seem to stay away," Bashir agreed.

"I wonder why?" Michelle smiled. "She's still on rounds, in case you're wondering …Where to? In or out?"

"Oh, out," Bashir said. "Lab's fine…who's on rounds?"

"Doctor Ortiz?"

She seemed surprised for some reason when he should be the one surprised and he was."Alone?" Bashir frowned at the padd she had in her hand. "I realize we appear to be rather quiet, but that hardly warrants leaving her unattended…what year is she, anyway? Can't be much more than first."

"Second," Michelle nodded. "We are _very quiet. But, no, she's not alone. Doctor Hamilton just came on…Though I'm sure if you want to take over her supervision, you'll get no complaint."_

She was teasing more than she was hinting. He knew why and he declined. "No, that's not necessary." He set the pack down to take his dinner and the padd from her. "Duty roster?"

"You're back," she shrugged.

"So I am. Where do you want me? 0700 all right? Days would be easier for the next week or so. I have this project I really do need to work on for Commander Dax…" he indicated the field pack. "Don't really want to, but if my days are busy and my nights are free, even I can't see where I have much of an excuse."

"You're the boss," Michelle assured, "if you want days, you've got days…She was here, by the way. Twenty minutes after you left."

"Commander Dax?" Bashir paused with a glance down on his com badge. "Odd she didn't just call me…" He grinned suddenly. "Checking up on me, is that what you're trying to say?"

"I don't know about checking up," Michelle said, but then she wasn't aware of any project at the time. "There was a definite silence, yes, when I told her you weren't here. I don't think she expected that."

"A longer one," Bashir imagined, "when you pointed her in the direction of Quark's."

"You said it not me," Michelle laughed.

"Yes," Bashir laughed as well, briefly. Sobering to wonder lightly, "Dax say what she wanted?"

"Only that she would be in the science lab should you have any questions."

Bashir smiled again. "Subtle hint to get to work. Did Keiko O'Brien happen to stop in, by any chance? Either today or yesterday? Doubt if she arrived much before then."

"No…" Michelle answered uncertainly. No more aware of Keiko's plan to return to the station than she had been about whatever project Bashir was talking about, or why he had even left the station. Only what common sense told her, and that was not to escort some Maquis relative of First Minister Shakaar Adon home to his distant colony, it was to escort Doctor Janice Lange home to Cardassia Prime; everyone knew about that by this time. Not the sort of thing one could expect to keep quiet even with the Chief's hearing having been closed to the public. Shocked to hear of the young woman's affiliation with Gul Anon Dukat? Michelle supposed she was as shocked as the next one, and no more shocked than anyone else. Didn't mean the young woman wasn't injured. Didn't mean Bashir wasn't a doctor, acutely tuned to being a doctor, first and foremost, ahead of even being a Starfleet officer. She smiled. "Was Mrs. O'Brien supposed to?"

"At some point," Bashir said. "Quite all right, certain she will.On that note however, I probably should get to work before Dax is back -- and I lose more than my cheese cake," he returned her padd. "I'm serious about discharging Doctor Ortiz. Nothing against her, but I simply don't have the time to supervise any resident right now, as I doubt if any of us do. Today it's quiet. Two weeks ago it was utter mayhem. Who knows what it will be a week from now, I dare not even guess. That's hardly your concern, certainly, but it is mine, and I will be discussing it with Captain Sisko. Together with the distinct possibility of my returning to the Bajoran colonies to retrieve a child in desperate need of medical intervention. That's for your information only right now, though who knows. There's also a chance I might just take you with me."

"Got it," Michelle nodded.

"Thank you," Bashir picked up his field pack and left for the medical lab.

Dax did not return with a fork or a whip, he didn't think she would, certain she was annoyed he had abandoned work for Quark's. He dawdled over his dinner just in case she did come back once determining he was not in Quark's, eating, drinking stardrifters, or playing the Dabo wheel, but in his lab, eating, drinking coffee, and catching the eye of his attractive new resident. Bashir blinked, startled to find the pair of charcoal-blue eyes gazing at him from across his coffee.

Ortiz smiled. "Cappuccino?"

"Similar," Bashir cautiously lowered his cup. "I'm sorry, but if you're looking for something I'm sure Michelle can help you. Other than that, I believe Doctor Hamilton is on call."

"No," she shook her head. "I was just wondering if you needed a hand."

"A hand?" Bashir repeated with a glance at the console that was crowded but blank.

"With the cheese cake," she laughed."It looks delicious."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, no, not with anything, thank you…As a matter of fact…" he straightened up from his slouch, coolly professional and alert as to why she would even be there instead of the Infirmary.

"You're not on duty," Ortiz preempted him. "Neither am I."

"I beg to differ," Bashir corrected sternly, "you are on duty."

"Dinner break. Even doctors eat," she teased. "I'm sure you've heard that before; said it a few times as well."

"Yes, well, whether I have or I haven't," he assured, "is irrelevant. I'm sorry, Doctor -- "

"Alexis Ortiz," she extended her hand. "You must be Julian Bashir."

Must be? Bashir stared at her hand. She knew very well who he was. He stiffened, distinctly annoyed by her assertive, casual manner with its presumption of familiarity that had him a peer, which he was not. Hardly even some supervising staff physician. "Doctor Bashir, Chief Medical Officer," he replied coldly.

"I expected you to be older," she agreed pleasantly, either ignoring or ignorant to his harsh tone. "I'm glad to see I was wrong. Biographies can be vague and so misleading…" She laughed again. "'Well, what exactly does 'distinction as the youngest nominee ever for the Carrington Award' mean when they're all 100 years old; you're only seventy?"

Bashir was of half a mind to think it was him; it wasn't.Frustrated by the situation with Jadzia, annoyed, panic-stricken to the point of paranoia at being found in the same room with some attractive twenty-five year old blonde, the young woman was completely out of line. If she didn't invade the lab, she certainly sought him out, inviting herself to engage him in friendly conversation. He insisted he wasn't her friend, anymore than he was her peer. He was her superior. He rose to tell her that and more and stopped. It wasn't her; it was him.

"I'm sorry," he apologized for any impatience she had to perceive, "but I'm rather…"

"Involved," Ortiz offered.

It was a very good word. "Yes," Bashir nodded. "I am extremely involved right now."

"With a woman or with your study?" she smiled at his stack of odd-looking containers.

It wasn't him. Bashir stared at her. Assertive? He meant aggressive. Flagrant and unacceptably so. He had this absurd mental image of himself hitting his com badge and calling Michelle for help; he didn't. "That's inappropriate," he informed her, deathly emphatic and serious.

She was dense. Certainly not deaf. Intentionally so. "What's inappropriate?" she smiled.

He wasn't getting into it. "You have a choice, Doctor," he said, "you can either return to duty and we can forget this entire conversation or I can relieve you of your duty, ending your assignment here, and quite possibly your career; which is it?"

"Not much of a choice, is it?" she thought about it for a moment before she stood up with smiling apologies. "Sorry, I wasn't trying to intrude."

"Good Lord," Bashir crumbled into his seat when she left. If it was him, it wasn't him in the way he had been thinking it might be him. Obviously there was just something about him that had them clamoring for his attention without any encouragement from him. First the Dabo hostess in Quark's and now this one. Jadzia the only one impervious to his charms or pheromones.

He managed to focus and do some work, not much. Only enough to know the extensive contamination of the samples was through no fault of his, and begin wondering if he wasn't looking at the results of one of Janice's attempts. Still, he couldn't help hoping Michelle would interrupt with some catastrophe, freeing him from his boredom and heavy thoughts; she didn't.

A few hours later he was back in his office idly scrolling though what had perhaps not started it all, but had certainly done its part, and that was his notes on Curzon's manacled hold on Jadzia and Dax.A subject broached, but not pursued. Curzon in turn,no fool, allowing Jadzia her week of freedom on a planet where there was no Worf to protect his interests and detour Bashir. Once aboard the _Defiant there was, as here aboard the station, Jadzia immediately back in and under the Ambassador's control. Bashir helpless to do anything shy of confronting her or Worf, which he would never do, anymore than his argument would ever stand up under the glaring spotlight of a peer review._

Foolishly having given into his own emotions, Bashir didn't need a convened panel of physicians to tell him how and where he had gone wrong in Jadzia's treatment plan, he already knew. Changing her status from _patient to __prisoner, what he__ truly believed her to be, didn't change any assistance he could hope to offer her would be medical or psychiatric._

The fact that he was deemed _unqualified by Starfleet Medical to act as Jadzia's attending physician did not alter how he had obviously chosen to ignore their direction by not immediately contacting the Symbiosis Commission with his concerns. For all apparent and practical purposes appointing himself her caregiver regardless, promptly moving on to violate one of the oldest and strictest ethics of his profession by becoming personally involved with his patient._

Albeit an unwritten rule of appropriate conduct by this century, it nevertheless remained one fiercely upheld by the Federation's staunchly conservative faction. With even the most liberal members of the medical world not likely to view his particular case with much or any sympathy when his idea of therapy in its entirety consisted of a weeklong session of unbridled sex. Adding to that a lacking attention to duty throughout his field assignment, his decision to offer medical care and treatment to the Maquis, and topping it all off with his initial donation of his neuro equipment to Sorge and the Cardassian Union.

"Good Lord," Bashir sighed, also not needing a convened session with Captain Sisko to understand he was as much in danger of losing his head as he was his rank and career should his short-lived love affair with Jadzia be revealed. Uncertain as to the actual category such a crime would fall into, or the nature of the charge Captain Sisko would be inclined to cite him with other than some obscure, made-up-on-the-spot regulation concerning unlawful carnal knowledge of a fellow officer's wife, he simply knew he did not wish to find out.A Lieutenant at the beginning of his tour of duty aboard DS9, six years later he had occasionally briefly achieved and enjoyed the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Losing his promotion or gaining it back in this bizarre cycle of punishment and reward, commonly for reasons no more dramatic or less significant than chronic insubordination, generally verbal. Making Jadzia right when she said he just didn't seem to know when to speak and when to keep silent, and he'd yet to learn. Entwining he and Captain Sisko in this equally bizarre love-hate relationship, the two of them united by mutual respect and personal like and so divided by a clash of opinions and wills.

"Wills," Bashir decided would be the nature of the division between he and Sisko should a division arise. Surely having willfully slept with Jadzia of his own free will, an opinion only that he had such a right being as he did not consider her Worf's wife, having only married Worf under great emotional and mental duress; an opinion with which Captain Sisko would likely disagree.

"Wills and opinions then," Bashir decided around the time he decided it was midnight, 0015 as a matter of fact.

He looked exhausted to Michelle Faraday's mothering eye when he stopped by to say goodnight, sounded it, too. More than discouraged by some project that may not be going as well as he hoped. She noted the field pack he carried slung over his shoulder somewhat absently.

"Don't call," she joked to cheer him. "You'll call us."

"No, please," Bashir agreed. "Not before zero-seven. If I'm not here by then, of course, please do." Ortiz he just gave a courteous nod and left to spend half of forever waiting for a turbolift on the Promenade spilling over with bodies renewed, refreshed from their day's stress and trials, hungry for action, adventure, and more.

He saw the tall, lanky figure of Jake Sisko standing about twenty heads and shoulders away talking to someone he couldn't see, probably Nog. Quark's homunculus nephew and Rom's son, standing at attention down around Jake's waist somewhere. Defying the critics with more than his diminutive size, but by being the first so-far-successful Ferengi Starfleet cadet, not simply the first and only, making his father proud and Captain Sisko relieved, having been the one who chanced recommending his son's partner in juvenile mischief and schemes.

Jake waved with a handsome grin and universal signing for "don't tell". Like Bashir would, like he even cared. Whatever neglect Captain Sisko felt over his only child stopping by for a home-based dinner for the first time in two months, quickly bowing out moments after the table was cleared with some transparent excuse about creative thinking or writer's block, when the truth was Jake simply wanted to spend some time with his friends that he also hadn't seen, Captain Sisko would get over it. If not this year some time within the next few. No longer thirteen, quizzical, watchful, and growing, Jake was nineteen, nearing twenty, a young man, zestful, involved, and self-assured.

"Enjoy it while you can," Bashir lamented sourly, sounding like Garak after too many glasses of kanar. The turbolift finally arrived and while he was unsuccessful in his attempt to convince the onslaught of bodies who appeared quite literally from everywhere that he was in possession of a kingdom of deadly biohazards, and perhaps they'd might want to consider waiting for the next one, he was successful in his bid for the chance to squash himself in with fourteen other anxious passengers too lazy to walk from one end of the Promenade to the other.Dizzy, reeking of ten or twelve different colognes and perfumes he was eventually deposited on his deck where he remembered the location of his quarters even if he didn't remember the walk, rattling through all the required security codes to gain access also by rote. The door slid open and he stepped tiredly inside to halt in the semi-darkness under the unexpected glaring light of his console and shadowy figure of Dax rising to greet him.

She read with a light on in bed when she was supposed to be sleeping and she worked in the dark? Something along those ridiculous lines ran through Bashir's mind, immediately followed by a disbelieving, "Jadzia…"

Admittedly, nothing even close to that ran through Dax's. "I found two more samples you may want to have a look at," she began to explain pleasantly.

He didn't answer her. Just sort of stared at her, from her to the console and field pack and then back at her, visibly having no idea what she was talking about, or why she was there. Dax nodded. _Mistake! screaming in her head as it tipped and she agreed, "I should just go -- "_

"Darling!" He exhaled, dropping the field pack. Dax heard one of the containers break, glad the pack was rated to contain biohazards, and Bashir was across the room, pulling her into his arms.

"Julian…" He heard her breathe with the same intensity of relief he felt as his mouth connected with hers, her fingers clutching the back of his jumpsuit so tightly the collar of his shirt threatened to strangle him; he didn't care. She caught herself before passion turned to pain. The fever in their embrace cooling to heated sensuality and then teasing; or she was. He was quite serious.

"I guess that answers any question of whether or not I misinterpreted something," Dax suggested coyly as they relaxed into just holding each other.

"Well, if you did, I did as well," Bashir assured. "Oh, darling, I'm so sorry."

"For what?" she smoothed his rumpled shirt.

"Anything, everything," he insisted. "I could feel myself retreating and I didn't want to, but I simply couldn't begin to figure out how not to. It was like I had no control at all, and that's just so insane."

"You have been distant," she smiled.

"Angry," he freely admitted. "So fiercely angry. Jealous. Maddened. But not at you, never at you. Just with everything. All this talk about opportunities, what opportunities? It's all manipulation. Sheer and desperate manipulation of us, time, place. Whether we're grabbing at each other in my quarters or in some turbolift -- and I love you.

"Oh, God, darling, I love you," he clutched her. "It's everything I want and don't want for us, between us, at the same time, when all I really want is you. To be with you. Every hour of every night, and every hour of every day. How was I supposed to just turn that off? After ten days just stop? The two of us just step back and step into living some schizophrenic version of life where we're lovers one moment and coworkers the next?"

"Difficult habit to break," she recalled his forewarning.

"Damn near impossible," he said. "Can you stay? Even an hour? I realize it's late, not very, but enough, and how crass that must sound. But I don't mean -- "

"Yes I can stay," she stopped him from needlessly explaining what he didn't have to.

"Or two?" he kissed her, the incredible heat between them rising immediately, their bodies molding and melting against each other. "I'll work the rest of the night here, in the science lab, medical, if you're concerned about an alibi, or questions from Worf or anyone, I don't care -- Damn!" he said as his com badge sounded. He couldn't believe it. It was like some sort of running gag. Only it wasn't Kira, it was Michelle Faraday above some sizable and loud commotion in the background.

"Yes?" Bashir answered the hail tersely, assuming if they were all screaming and trying to out shout each other's profanities they couldn't very well be dead or too gravely injured, could they?

_"You're needed in the Infirmary," Michelle apologized for the interruption._

"I realize someone thinks that," Bashir assured, having realized that when she called and said _Doctor Bashir to the Infirmary. "However, I'm not on call. Where's Doctor Hamilton? For that matter Ortiz?"_

_"Here," Michelle quickly ran down a list of who else was there. That included three of the six staff physicians they had, half the nursing staff, and unless Bashir was mistaken, failing to recognize the feline howl, Leeta. Either struggling with Faraday for control of her com badge, or in the immediate vicinity, snarling meaningless threats like, __"I said, shut up! Don't touch me! Gimmick? I'll give you a gimmick! Right here!"_

Whatever Leeta did Bashir suspected to be somewhat more risqué than violent as many of the screaming crowd momentarily forgot their differences to explode in a whooping, cheering round of whistles and applause, much to Leeta's satisfaction.

_"Now that's a gimmick! Don't tell me! I have statutory rights! Who won the war, anyway? Was it you? No! But it was me!"_

"Garak?" Bashir mouthed to Dax with a frown.

"I was thinking Quark?" she shrugged, equally mute, and thinking obviously of a different war.

They were both wrong, but that was unknown and rather unimportant right now. _"Doctor?" Faraday was inquiring, around, between, Leeta now screaming, __"Julian? Is that you, Julian? Well, you listen to me, Doctor Julian Bashir!" _

She fell abruptly silent, Bashir could only guess why. Michelle far less desperate though still flustered, verifying if he was there. Bashir sighed. "Yes, I'm here, and I'll be right there."

_"Thank you," she signed off._

Dax smiled, interpreting Leeta's "statutory rights" and the possible cause behind the ruckus in the Infirmary. "Darla, perhaps…or is it Starla?" she laughed at Bashir's perplexed look. "Quark's new hostess. The one with the violet wig?"

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, actually, I think it's something like Viola."

"Makes sense," Dax accepted. "The name?" she offered when it didn't make much sense to him. "Something to do with the color purple?"

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, I suppose it does…purple, violet."

"Leeta was in quite a state," Dax remembered.

"Apparently still is," Bashir agreed though it was hardly something that was on his mind. "Stay?" he hoped. "Please? It should only be a few minutes."

"I'll be here," she nodded.

"Good," he kissed her, promising to be right back and left. His dropped, forgotten field pack still on the floor.

Dax smiled, deciding to just take the contaminated pack to the science lab instead of calling for transport and accompanying quarantine field. Ten minutes later she was back. An hour later, Julian wasn't. By 0200 when Bashir still hadn't returned, she kicked off her boots, curling her legs comfortably underneath her as she sat at the console determined to finish cataloging the samples she had with her.

At 0349 she downloaded the completed base analysis, collected his stuffed bear to keep her company while she read through the data, relaxing on his bed. Too tired to care, or react to the fact she was lying on his bed in his quarters for the first time in either of their lives, regardless of the intimacy that had already occurred between them. This was different. It was very different. A confirmation of who and what they were. She fell asleep shortly after that, the light on, the data padd still in her hand, and never so much as a thought about Worf. It was like she didn't remember him at all; she didn't.

  



	6. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"Wow, that was close," Jake admitted to Ziyal when Bashir turned away to wait for the turbolift.

"Well…" Ziyal said.

"Yeah, really," Nog finished for her with a scoffing knock in Jake's diaphragm. "What are you talking about? She's dead. No one can see her."

"Well…" Ziyal said as far as that, "not exactly."

"Present company excluded," Jake grinned.

"And your father doesn't count," Nog put in. "He's crazy, we're not. Jake's a writer and I'm a cadet. He's got the imagination, and I've got the training…we're trained for these sort of encounters," he nodded confidentially and somewhat erratically as he stood a little straighter in his Starfleet uniform even if he couldn't quite manage any taller.

"You're not dead," Ziyal reassured him.

  


"Thank you!" Nog heaved a great big gulping gasp of relief."A load off of my lobes, I don't know about you. I remember the war. I remember surviving the war even if you didn't."

"Nog!" Jake huffed because he was tall he was what? Older? Smarter? Wiser?

"What?" Nog whined like his Uncle Quark. "I said she was dead, she is dead. I didn't say she looked dead, she doesn't…You don't," he promised Ziyal. "You look pretty good, actually. For a dead female, I mean. I've seen worse, trust me, so's he."

"Thank you," Ziyal laughed. "I think."

"Anytime," Nog nodded. "Anytime." He eyed Jake.

"What?" Jake groaned. "She's an evolved lifeform. What's so difficult to understand about that?"

"Force," Nog corrected. "Life force. Nothing's too hard to understand. I'm just saying if she's wrong, and you're wrong, and I am dead, someone's got some explaining to do. Maybe not you to me because you're dead, too, but definitely your father to my father."

"Oh?" Jake said. "What happened to it comes with the uniform?"

"It does!" Nog snapped. "But is it okay with you if I graduate first before I die? I mean, if I have a choice here, that's my choice!"

"It's fine with me," Jake assured, likewise having a few plans for the future that did not include being a guest at his own funeral.

"Thank you!" Nog resumed inspecting Ziyal for any signs of being a Changeling rather than who she was. "Wanna jumja stick?"

"Hm…maybe later," Ziyal agreed.

"Uh, huh," Nog nodded with a tip for Jake. "That's what they all say."

"She's invisible," Jake countered.

Nog thought about that, it seeming redundant to being both invisible and liquid. "Okay," he accepted that much."So where to? Not that I mean to suggest anywhere isn't private enough for you.I'm just saying you're here for a reason, right? Stop by. Say hello. See how the old gang is doing. Major Kira. Garak. Captain Sisko…" his fingers edged up toward his com badge.

"Will you stop that?" Jake slapped his hand away.

"Hello!" Nog defended his paranoia. "He's your father, he's my commanding officer! I think he might want to know he's got the ghost of Gul Dukat's dead daughter haunting the station, _don't you?"_

"Who says she's haunting?"

"I do! She's two weeks late to kill Legate Damar but maybe she's operating in a different time zone than we are. Okay?"

"I don't think so," Jake shook his head.

"Well, I do," Nog assured. "And I'm not letting her out of my sight until I know exactly, and I mean, exactly what is going on -- so let's have it," he gave Ziyal a nudge just to see if she was solid, which she seemed to be. Cold, clammy, rubbery like unchewed meat. "Okay, that much is normal," he agreed. "So what do you want? Weapons? Control of Ops? I think you have an order over at Garak's you didn't live to pick up."

"Oh, I don't know…" Ziyal considered.

"Mysteriously, I might add," Nog clued Jake.

"She's half-Bajoran!" Jake insisted.

"And the other half's Cardassian," Nog was keen. "Lucky me."

"I think you mean us."

"No, I mean me," Nog assured. "You're Human, I'm Ferengi. You deal in words, I deal in profit -- Or I should. If your 

father had to be right about influence, did he have to be wrong about whose on whom?"

"I don't know," Jake sighed. "Just…"

"I am," Nog said. "I am. I'm just waiting on Ziyal." He eyed her. "Okay, what about this one? Your father's release from Federation prison or you'll destroy the station? It's a good one, I'll admit -- It'll never happen, but it is a good one."

Ziyal smiled. "Your Uncle Quark's maybe?"

"Where Jake and I can sit and talk to ourselves and who's to notice or complain?" Nog verified.

"Something like that," she laughed.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Nog set out. "We'll sit at the bar and see how many kanars it takes Garak to see you and me and Jake not to. I'm off duty anyway, what do I care?"

"I don't think so," Jake shook his head for reasons other than his father would stuff his head down the solid waste disposal if he even thought Jake had touched a glass of alcohol, never mind tasted one. What reasons those were, were probably extraneous considering the one given.

"Okay, fine, we'll save getting into trouble for some other night and just sit in the back and drink root beer," Nog waved disgusted. "Is that more like it?"

"Yes," Jake said.

Which explained why minutes later the two of them found themselves under arrest for disorderly conduct with a hundred or so innocent, or not so innocent others as they walked into Quark's, straight into Leeta's volcanic eruption against her violet competitor. Nog springing when he should not have sprung, to Leeta's defense, inspiring the hundred or so others to join him in the fun, Garak and Quark among them.

Jake ducking when he should not have ducked, his face connecting with Leeta's fist clenching her synthetic trophy and he was down. Flat on the floor, dazed and buried under a purple wig, Leeta staring at him aghast before she whirled, spewing rage at the one she claimed to be responsible for her punching Jake in the face and blackening his eye with the other one's hair.

Or what was left of her hair. Either way Odo could understand how it might have all come about, the same as he could hear Nog shouting about his right to defend his mother. Something which explained why his mother, Leeta, was in reasonably healthy and clothed shape, to where the other one was healthy.

Still, it was a familiar claim; young, virile teenage family members rising to the defense and protection of helpless, older family members, it was definitely a familiar claim. Reasonable only in that Nog was more reasonable than his predecessor Pfrann Dukat, stopping short of removing the heart of his mother's alleged antagonist and satisfying his warrior spirit and code by helping Leeta strip her clean; or almost clean.

"Yes…" Odo noted. With half a purple leg left, half an orchid thong, and half a violet shoe, the hostess formerly known as Viola was generally stripped down to her pink flesh even if Nog and Leeta didn't quite make it to the white bone. In contrast the brown, shoulder length hair seemed oddly out of place. Nevertheless, for a moment it was Bashir's voice Odo found himself listening to rather than a hundred others; not there, in his head. The good doctor saying something like: _Yes, well, to prosecute a nineteen-year-old third year Starfleet cadet…_

_Yes, well, she's not his mother. Odo could hear himself countering, more than likely for naught._

_Yes, well, she clearly is his mother in Nog's mind. Bashir argued, knowing the mind of teenage Ferengi named Nog even better than he knew the mind of teenage Cardassians named Dukat. __Certainly married to his father…_

_If not Ferengi, to boot. Odo helped Bashir out, he thought sarcastically, with his latest dissertation on when and where to apply cultural principles and when and where not to. By general rule that would be when and where Bashir wanted to. To the devil, the demons, targs and gods with anyone else._

_Precisely. Nog is Ferengi. A naked woman to the Ferengi is hardly anything extraordinary._

Which was not only true, but completely beside the point. Odo left off thinking about Bashir's hypothetical prattle of nonsense to concentrate on what was the point, and what were the rules. Naked females or males were not legal except in times of ceremony, such as a wedding, as they were certainly distracting. Perhaps not to him, but to the vast majority of Quark's patrons who were not Ferengi anymore than the hostess. Beyond all of that it was incontrovertibly illegal to require or force a female or male to become naked against their will.__

"Someone want to give this young woman a hand, or a jacket…or a piece of cloth," Odo inquired above the general and ongoing uproar. To which the crowd immediately made a point to NOT respond, apparently because half of them did not like her, to where the other half apparently did.

"Going once," Odo dangled thirty days suspended sentence for their reconsideration.

"Going twice…thank you," he accepted the missing bottom half of the torn purple leg from Nog dutifully presenting it to him like any good Starfleet cadet in his position would.

"And thank you," he accepted another piece from Garak; it appeared to be part of a missing sleeve. Nevertheless, he made a note that Garak stooped to retrieve the amputated slip of gauze. He did not have it on, or in his possession when Odo arrived on the scene with his troop of security to quell Quark's resumed weekly free-for-all now that they had all had their fill of two weeks of silence. To where Nog did have his piece in his possession.

"As far as you…" Odo reached down to collect the woman's hair from the hands and face of another key suspect who might like to wish he stood a chance at being overlooked as he lay on the floor at Odo's feet.

"Definitely wish," Odo admitted upon seeing who he did not expect to see under that mask of purple hair and that was Jake Sisko.

"I…" Jake stared up at him through his brilliantly discolored left eye.

"Also reasonable," Odo agreed with the faltering stammer, giving young Mister Sisko a hand up to his feet and promptly cuffing him the same as everyone else was cuffed. All but two of them with the stock, surprisingly inflexible fiber cording Odo preferred for no particular reason other than they were lightweight and therefore extraordinarily portable; by the gross if he needed them.

The remaining two found their wrists and much of their forearms uncomfortably clamped inside a massive and heavy block of duranium, commonly known as Cardassian handcuffs, but only because they were. As they were carted along by his security squad for show as much as a precaution just in case there were any Cardassians, or Klingons, or particularly unruly participants in the crowd.

There weren't any Klingons. There was one Cardassian. Garak. Surprisingly mute and typically docile but Odo still clamped a pair on him because he felt like it. There was also Leeta. Hardly mute or docile. However the sheer weight of the handcuffs was generally successful in quieting her hands even if they couldn't silence her.

Jake, in the meantime, petitioned to join the masses, complaining the standard, "Do you really have to do that?" in response to his hands being secured.

"Probably not," Odo grunted. No more than he had to call Jake's father. Not there, anyway, not just then, but he did. His reasoning being that if he did chances were he wouldn't have to do it again. "Constable Odo to Captain Sisko…" he activated his com badge. 

Jake groaned and hung his head in resignation.

"Good," Odo nodded sharply in approval.

_"I beg your pardon?" Sisko answered, hardly deaf to the bedlam surrounding Odo and curious as to what might be good about it._

"Not you," Odo assured, "Jake. We're in Quark's. You can meet us in the Infirmary…no reason to run, it's only a black eye. That, and he's not going anywhere. He's under arrest. Disorderly conduct for now." He ogled Nog, giving the Captain a necessary moment to digest what he was saying. "So's your cadet Nog; same charge."

_"On my way," Sisko signed off._

"So are we," Odo gave Jake another nod. Certain the Captain was running. "Let's go."

They got there ahead of the Captain. They also got there ahead of Bashir who oddly enough wasn't there personally supervising his new resident, and who Nurse Faraday hailed in a flustered, desperate attempt to bring order.

No easy task. Removing Leeta's antagonist Viola from the spotlight simply meant they now only had ninety-nine or so highly and loudly opinionated suspects, better than half of them intoxicated. One to the point that he made it to the Infirmary threshold but no farther before he toppled over: Garak. So that explained the vocal paralysis, as it left them with ninety-eight or so yet-to-be-hoarse voices.

As Garak was clearly not the one Leeta was screaming at about the war and winning it while Faraday was attempting to coerce Bashir into joining the mayhem.

Neither was it Quark, writhing and screaming more about his knee than anything else.

It was Odo. The war Leeta referenced was the Federation-Dominion. The gimmick Bashir couldn't see anymore than he could see who Leeta was screaming at, was not risqué. It was a violent assault on one of the security officers attempting to hold her by her upper arms that were not immobilized by the heavy, massive block of duranium secured in front of her; the one flaw in the Cardassian handcuffs, if one wasn't Cardassian. Their block structure prohibiting an arresting officer from securing a suspect's hands behind their back unless the officer didn't mind the risk of breaking the arrested's arms or dislocating their shoulders as one or the other gave or held.

The Cardassians didn't mind the risk with their suspects, so it wasn't a flaw. The Klingons didn't mind either; they were Klingons. Their arms and shoulders could easily withstand the puny force and if they couldn't, they still didn't mind.The Federation and Bajor did mind. Since they did they ended up with one of their security officers unconscious. Leeta wrenched loose of her gentlemanly sentry holding her carefully, not tightly, swinging her cuffed hands like a battering ram, knocking the security officer senseless and looking to knock the second one as the crowd cheered and she took a bow, screaming for Bashir. 

She ended up in solitary confinement, otherwise known as Bashir's office with Odo to contend with if she cared to contend; she didn't. Not physically. Verbally she didn't mind searing him until Bashir showed up. Bashir did. Ten minutes later in his office, five or so minutes before then in his Infirmary. 

Bashir was also five minutes ahead of the Captain which Odo did not know, nor would he have presumed. Had Odo known he would have to agree it made sense. The Captain either did not run, choosing instead to make his son squirm a little in apprehensive anticipation, if nothing else, or the Captain entertained his own brief explosion before he ran.

Odo was close. Sisko's brief explosion was internal, not external. The Constable's report of he and Jake being _in Quark's annoyed him. He preferred Jake not go to Quark's, or if Jake went, he went infrequently for a reason, such as dinner. Jake's common reason __visiting with friends didn't cut it, not even at nineteen. Odo's subsequent detail of __a black eye paralyzed Sisko momentarily. A black eye was an injury, though a minor one. __Under arrest was hardly minor, whatever the charge._

"Ben…" Kassidy was already out of bed with Odo's first mention of meeting them in the Infirmary. _A black eye relieved her. __Under arrest jarred her and she wasn't Jake's father._

Or mother, if Sisko cared to be more gender-accurate, which Sisko did not care to be. His son was under arrest. He stopped caring about or listening to anything else. 

In the meantime, who Kassidy was, was Kassidy Yates, an attractive woman in her forties with clear brown skin and soft brown eyes. Clear thinking and sensible-minded. Calm, stable, solid. Independent, willful and wise. A woman with her own opinions, damn anyone else's, and that included Benjamin Sisko's, who she affectionately called Ben, lover, friend.

She was also a former freighter Captain for Bajor Prime, truly wanting to be a freighter Captain again and having a difficult time securing a permanent position eighteen months after serving a six month prison term for delivering medical supplies to the Maquis.

Based on that history she was potentially someone who Bashir intended to wave in support of his argument concerning appropriate versus inappropriate Maquis association. Affording Sisko what? The opportunity to purge himself of the guilt over having entrapped and arrested his lover rather than tip her off to her impending fate and in turn, sell himself and his uniform out for what? Love? Out of the question. Whatever sadness Sisko felt over the events of two years ago he harbored no guilt, none. Loving Kassidy now as he loved her then.

Whatever momentary betrayal Kassidy felt at the time was gone before the Federation Marshals took her away. Benjamin Sisko did not betray her, she betrayed him. She put him in the position he found himself in, and she put herself, not the other way around. Forcing him to choose between his soul or hers when she knew what he would choose and could only choose, which was why she loved him. A strong woman with the strength to be honest, an honest man with the strength to be strong.

It took something more than strength however to condemn a nine-year-old child to an untimely, unfair, and unnecessary death. If employing Kassidy as a defense tactic was truly part of Bashir's plan, Bashir would be wrong in his thinking, and equally out of line. There was no such thing as appropriate Maquis association in Sisko's mind. Fully aware of Bashir's medical screening of the Maquis survivors with Major Kira's consent and approval, while Sisko could understand Kira's and his Chief Medical officer's position even more than he could understand Kassidy's, he did not agree with it. He could not agree, and would not agree. Once the colonists were granted formal immunity or a reprieve for their past deeds by either Bajor or the UFP, preferably both, that was another matter. As that was not now. 

Regarding Bashir's intent to treat the Maquis child, if not petition to return to the colony to bring her to DS9? Doctor Bashir would be returning to the remote Bajoran colony sooner than he realized at the present moment, bringing much more than his medical field pack and his Nurse Faraday with him, for a great deal longer than one week. Off the record, what Bashir, for that matter Dax, Kira, or Keiko O'Brien, did on that colony beyond what they were supposed to be doing was not something Sisko necessarily needed, or wanted to know.

On the record, they were there to conduct an extensive field study of the area. If somewhere between records Bashir found he could not restore the child to a reasonable degree of health with the equipment he would have available to him, he would at least be assured Sisko was home aboard the station thinking about it. On the verge of considering discussing it with Kassidy, almost desperately wanting her to talk him into what he wasn't sure he could talk himself out of when Odo interrupted with a call about another child; his. One who wasn't nine and should know better; apparently he didn't.

"I'm calm," Sisko advised Kassidy when he signed off from Odo to pull on his shirt, trousers, and boots, which he sat down on the bed to do in an effort to prove just how calm he was.

"No, you aren't calm," Kassidy corrected, more than his heaving breast telling her that.

"Yes, I am calm," Sisko said, his shoes on his feet, his socks in his hand, his shirt on backwards and inside out, his chest heaving only because he was breathing deeply to remain calm.

"No, you aren't calm," she assured, dressed and pulling her hair back in a clip, pointing out his socks and his shirt because she cared. About him, and about Jake who was physically fine except for a black eye. Who was under arrest for whatever he had done, they would find out what he had done and take appropriate action. Stuffing Jake's head in the solid waste disposal was not appropriate action.

"I have never put my hands on Jake," Sisko refuted her outlandish claim coldly, wrestling with his shirt that simply refused to be cooperative no matter what he did to it.

"No," Kassidy believed him when he said that. Believing also he had, upon rare occasion, thought about it, and was thinking about it now. In between thinking about Jake's first steps, his first day of school, his first desperately broken heart at age twelve with his mother's violent death and where, he, Benjamin Sisko had gone wrong in his son's upbringing from there. He hadn't gone wrong, not from there or anywhere. Jake Sisko was a personable, likable, highly intelligent and upstanding young man. He was also nineteen. Some times nineteen-year-olds just seemed to forget who and what they were for no reason other than they were nineteen. Ben should know that, having been nineteen once himself, the same as she had been. In the meantime, asked, she would have to say, she, personally, did not believe Jake forgot any such thing. Sure there was much more to the story than what they were presently hearing.

"Of course there's more to the story," Sisko stared at her. What was she saying? That he didn't believe in his own son?

"Then get dressed so we can find out," she pulled his shirt out of his hands to pull it down over his head right side out and forward, assuming he could take it from there. If not? Chances were someone else somewhere along the line would be remarking on how calm he wasn't regardless of how calm he claimed to be.

"Jake…" Odo was not alone in his unexpected and somewhat unpleasant surprise. If there was anyone Bashir expected to see housed among the burly group of belligerent derelicts upsetting the Infirmary's sterile atmosphere, he certainly did not expect to see Jake.

Or Nog really either, except possibly in the role of an appointed deputy, which Nog wasn't. He was wrinkled and torn with a host of superficial abrasions, handcuffed and under arrest the same as Jake who sported a painful looking and potentially incriminating black eye.

"I don't believe it…" Bashir threaded his way through the bustling din of the Infirmary to locate Michelle and Leeta only to pause dumbfounded at Jake sitting on an examining bed with three strangers Bashir hoped rather than friends. 

"Hi, Doc," Jake grinned as nonchalantly as he could under the circumstances with an accompanying shrug of his shoulders. "I'd wave, but you know."

"Yes, well, I'd try something other than that if I were you," Bashir suggested, borrowing a passing tricorder to have a look over that eye.

"You mean like innocent bystander?" 

"Either that or 'it's a long story'…which I'd also make a good one," Bashir patted Jake's shoulder to emphasize his point, in reassurance that Jake was fine, and also to bring his attention to the strands of purple fiber that looked remarkably like hair.

Jake sighed. "Would you believe me if I said I don't even know who she is?"

"Viola," Bashir guessed. "But I think that's probably less important than what happened?"

"I don't know," Jake shook his head. "I honestly don't know."

"Think about it," Bashir encouraged, spotting Michelle on her fast march toward him. "I'll have Faraday take care of that eye for you -- "

"I don't need -- " Jake said quickly as he turned away.

"What?" Bashir stopped.

Jake stared at him. "I don't know," he decided. "Nothing. That's okay."

Bashir looked at him. He looked chagrinned, awkward and mildly ill at ease. "It's okay," Jake said again, his eyes wide. "Go do what you need to do. I'm fine."

"Come here a minute," Bashir took him by the arm, reassuring security it was all right, and begging a moment from Michelle who tried to look patient amidst the chaos.

"Well, yes, that's part of it," Jake agreed as Bashir drew him aside to the amusement of the hardened trio sitting with him, "I don't need any special treatment. You must have fifty black-eyes in here."

"At least," Bashir said. "With half of them back next week, and the other the week after. You can't be serious about caring what any of these people think at all. If you're going to exercise a right, exercise the one to be set apart because you are different."

"Innocent, anyway," Jake said. "Sorry, Doc, but Odo's right: equality. Even if it's the kind no one likes."

Bashir rolled his eyes. "Odo's only trying to make a point."

"Like calling my father?"

"Exactly," Bashir assured. "No one thinks you're anything but innocent…Nog, either…" He left Jake standing there, spying the Captain on a fast advance, pensive, troubled, in his dignified way, Kassidy with him.

"Jake's quite fine," Bashir greeted them enthusiastically. "Nog, also, I would think. I was just going to have Michelle see to the two of them…" he heeded Michelle's urgent touch of his arm, notifying him Leeta was in his office and generally beside herself.

"Fair exchange," Bashir grinned at Sisko. "Mind? Leeta's frightfully upset apparently."

"Not at all," Sisko took a deep breath, stopping in front of Jake with an eye on those security wristlets.

"They really aren't necessary," Faraday assured in support, collecting a bio-repair unit and looking around for a quieter corner, not easy to come by. "Doctor Bashir's right."

"Are they?" Sisko asked Jake.

"No," Jake sighed. "It was all an accident. No one meant to hit anyone -- I swear, Dad, Nog and I were only trying to separate them."

Sisko nodded. "Who?"

"Leeta and one of the other hostesses? They were arguing, fighting, I guess you could say. I don't know about what." He frowned because if one listened to Quark above the general din it had as much to do with Leeta being malicious and power mad as it did with the color purple, none of which made much sense. Jake looked quizzically at his father.

"Hm," Sisko said tersely, also not listening much to Quark's wailing, an uncomplimentary analogy coming to mind. "It's not called a cat fight without reason."

"Cat fight?" Jake repeated uncertainly.

"We'll discuss it," Sisko assured with a sharp, quick look around for Odo. 

"It doesn't take much," Faraday was back with Nog and a friendly wink, beckoning for them to follow her.

"No, it does not." Sisko eyed Nog.

"No one touches my mother," Nog insisted stubbornly. "I don't care who they are -- Sir," he added.

"We'll also discuss that," Sisko promised. "Constable Odo, Nurse Faraday?"

"Doctor Bashir's office," she pointed.

"Thank you." 

Kassidy watched him leave. "What do they call a brawl when it's two men?" she remarked.

Michelle chuckled. "Fun."

Kassidy nodded. Either way it was over. The fun or the fight. She maintained an interest herself in securing Jake and Nog's release from their handcuffs.

"Um…" Jake sided with the hesitant security officer.

"I know," Kassidy said. "Odo was making a point; it's been made," she assured the officer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Bashir reaffirmed his opinion of Odo's strict rules of equality and order when he entered his office to stagger back a step or two from the thudding blow of Leeta's Cardassian handcuffs in his chest as she jump up with her shrill scream of welcome, rushing headlong into him. He caught her and his balance, the fact that she was something to hang onto no doubt helping him out with the latter.

"Yes, well," Odo grunted something of the like, "one of those things the Cardassians overlooked."

"Yes, apparently," Bashir agreed, speaking less of Leeta's fettered wrists than of her grappling fingers and three-inch nails that were free and remarkably dexterous, clawing and scratching for his attention which she had. "Leeta!" He got her under control,or at least her name in edgewise as he attempted to get her under control, Odo grunting again, something about that's why the handcuffs were necessary.

  


"While waiting for the shackles, yes," Bashir said.

Odo eyed him. "She assaulted an officer."

"She didn't assault anyone," Bashir corrected, like he had been there which he hadn't been. "That includes Jake -- Jake's fine," he reassured Leeta, managing to extract that much from her hysteria. "He's fine."

"Oh," she stopped abruptly to immediately clutch for him again, that time angrily. "Are you dating her?"

He reacted. He didn't mean to but he did, her demand catching him by surprise. "Who?" he involuntarily blurted out.

"Viola." Odo offered him a scrap of sparkling violet gauze for his consideration.

"Oh…" Bashir said.

"Are you?" Leeta insisted.

"Well, no, of course not…" Bashir said.

"Ha!" she said triumphantly. "I told that stupid Garak and Quark. Julian has _taste, you know. He has __class. Unlike some people around here!"_

"Yes, of course I do," Bashir agreed honestly, Odo rolling his eyes. "No offense to the young woman…I hardly even know her…In fact, I don't know her…"

"Ha!" Leeta sneered. "Who wants to?"

"Well, I'm sure someone does," Bashir smiled, highly doubting if concern over his social life would be found to be the root to her madness. "Simply not me…In all honesty I'd have to say I far preferred her predecessor…"

"I'm her predecessor!" Leeta assured, thinking and speaking of a different sort, and she was right, she was.She and he were exactly who he and Dax should have become following the amicable end to their relationship (that never was) and her marriage to Worf, very good friends.

"Quite," Bashir agreed regardless. "And I like you -- very much," he gently guided her back to her seat where he tried to make sense out of what was troubling her. He couldn't beyond Quark being an antagonist, which Quark was, and her feeling slighted and insulted by what she called an infringement on her position as manager of the hostesses, largely self-appointed though that position may be, which she had every right to her feelings.

"They're legitimate feelings," Bashir was outside talking to Odo nodding and saying "Um, hm," every other sentence or so. 

It wasn't the conversation Odo expected. He expected the one about Nog's right to defend his father's wife, not Leeta's exclusive rights to the color purple.

Bashir blinked. "Of course Nog's rising to Leeta's defense is reasonable."

It was so reasonable it didn't even warrant a discussion in Bashir's opinion, to where Leeta did. A dramatic one, melodramatic anyway. Complete with the exhausted hand to the forehead, the tempered impatience, the trying and failing attempt to have Odo understand; he understood. Quark's would be lost without Quark, it would be lost without Leeta as would Quark.

"Precisely," Bashir said, relieved to find he was getting somewhere.

"Um, hm," Odo said, it all depending on where Bashir thought he was getting. "In the first place…"

"No, her position isn't largely in her head," Bashir argued. "Generally of her own doing, yes, I said that."

"Dukat's doing," Odo assured just to set the record straight insofar as who had actually hired Leeta, and who had merely set her down in the middle of Quark's bar one day where she stayed long after Dukat left.

"I don't care how she came here, or there," Bashir insisted. "I don't care if she sprouted from a seed."

"No," Odo agreed Bashir cared about what he called the right of seniority and Quark's audacity to tell Leeta to change her outfit rather than the twenty-four hour old new one and not expect more than his knee to be broken.

"Precisely. You have to understand Leeta -- you do understand Leeta. Why am I even having this conversation with you?"

Odo was still working on that part. The rest of it he believed he may have. "She's simple, child-like," Bashir enlightened him in case he didn't. "An idiot savant, if you insist."

"No offense to the young woman," Odo nodded.

"Hardly," Bashir snapped, but only because Leeta was also clever, crafty, incredibly resilient, and acutely tuned to her public. All capsuled rather nicely under the stock phrase damn good at what she did.

"Yes, well, what she did was assault a Dabo hostess," Odo took his scrap of purple gauze back. "Jake Sisko and a security officer -- among other random attempts to assault others along the way."

"No, she didn't," Bashir maintained, again like he had been there, which he hadn't been. "Leeta didn't, nor does she assault anyone however upset she might get. Something is clearly very wrong far beyond a perception of competition. Now, I don't care what you put in your log, but I'm telling you I want those handcuffs off Leeta and I want them off her now. You may be the Chief Constable, but I am the Chief Medical Officer, and you are not only unduly harassing my patient, you are exacerbating her emotional crisis."

"Not guilty to either," Odo assured, but that was all right. He believed Humans had a saying. "It's your funeral."

"I beg to differ, it's yours," Bashir pointed as he preceded Odo in through the door of his office, "if Captain Sisko comes in and finds Jake trussed up like some common criminal." Even though he already knew Sisko was there, with Jake, something Odo didn't, though presumed, and found out for a fact shortly after he released Leeta to Bashir's soothing, petting, "No, it's all right, it's all right. Talk to me. I want you to talk to me…" Odo left them there to return to the hub of the Infirmary and Sisko successful in hunting him down.

"Had enough?" Odo wondered of the Captain, not about the Captain, but about Jake. "Not you, Jake."

"Yes." Sisko may not have understood what his Constable meant at first, but he did now, and the answer to the question was yes as well.

"Good," Odo approved. "Though I'm sure you'll find there to be some reasonable explanation."

"Oh, yes," Sisko was certain of that. "And I'll have it, Constable, you can bet on it."

"Yes," Odo said. "In the meantime I believe you'll find the explanation to go something like Nog's effort to protect Leeta."

Sisko stopped him. "What's reasonable, Constable, isn't necessarily acceptable from Nog, Jake, or anyone else."

"Um, hm," Odo said. "Though reasonable nevertheless being that she is married to Nog's father Rom."

"Yes. However, quite frankly right now, Constable…" Sisko acknowledged.

"You don't know, do know, don't care, do care," Odo nodded.

"Something like that," Sisko gestured for him to proceed. 

Interestingly enough when they arrived at Jake with Nog they were both already free of their bondage and being treated for their assorted scrapes and bruises. Something to do with rank and privilege no doubt.

Odo ogled Bashir's Michelle Faraday, a Human he hardly knew but was coming to, instinct and experience suggesting he trust her about as far as he trusted Kassidy Yates, whom he suspected to be the ringleader. Sisko was more interested in Yates' involvement, though he was trying very hard not to let that show.

Ms. Yates proved to be of little assistance in that area with her blatant pat of Sisko's arm and comforting assurance. "It was ridiculous. Ridiculous," she emphasized, in all having found his security personnel reasonable and cooperative once bringing that to their attention.

Faraday just snorted, averting her eyes from Odo who she found to be an extremist. At least here, tonight, now, in this instance. A throwback to another time and same place. Forgetful that the occupation was over. Sisko and his Federation in control, not Dukat and his Cardassians.

"Yes, well," Odo cleared his throat, not having to read Faraday's mind and dropping a hint. "An extremist would likely order the arrest of you two for interfering."

They looked at each other, Faraday and Yates, in as much to say in whose dreams? When they were through looking at each other, they looked at him, their expression and opinion unchanged. That was all right. Sisko was also looking at him, somewhat startled and uncertain if his Constable was joking or serious.

"Or maybe not," Odo consented, secretly finding it interesting and disconcerting that Dukat might have a better sense of equality and fairness for all; Dukat didn't. Unless one considered everyone's right and equal opportunity to be imprisoned and/or executed, publicly or otherwise. Apart from that Dukat had maintained little involvement or interest in the general doings of the Bajoran workforce aboard his station, or his station personnel, other than in getting to the bottom of whatever Threat or Force threatening him or his operation. Hence to the person or people responsible and from there quell the uprising or problem of the day. A passion that might also suggest the former station Commander was thorough; he wasn't. He wanted to live. To live, it was to Dukat's distinct benefit to correctly identify the troublemaker or makers, be they Bajoran, or some ambitious Cardassian competitor seeking to usurp him.

That was also an interesting thought. Odo glanced at the remnant of purple gauze in his hand. Leeta was a lot like her predecessor, and he didn't mean the hostess killed during the Maquis attack two weeks ago, he meant Dukat. So was he. Order. Separating and identifying, and in Leeta's case, annihilating the competition. He might do the same thing, who knew. Personally unaware of any immediate or impending competition for his position, he was keenly aware of the challengers. Some chronic, some rare. Bashir was chronic. Sisko was rare.

"I should think not, Constable," Sisko was nodding, smiling, speaking lightly though seriously about Odo not being serious about casting either Yates or Faraday in irons; Yates, admittedly probably more on his mind.

Odo grunted. "Yes, well, whatever Dukat may have been and is, reasonable doesn't come to mind, insane does." Supported, enhanced, _caused by conditioning, training, general personality, and any number and variety of narcotics and alcoholic stimulants and depressants. Some designed to help him sleep at night, others to keep him functioning during the day. Occasionally, over the years, he apparently got them mixed up. Odo had no proof to such a claim, it was just something he suspected. Finding it difficult to believe anyone could be that erratically functioning and non-functioning, coherent and incoherent without chemical assistance._

Bashir, shockingly, held a different opinion than Odo of the former Cardassian dictator, diagnosing Dukat to be unequivocally and indisputably organically mentally ill. Aggravated by his conditioning and training, but hardly caused. Bashir found no evidence of any sort of cranial implant or any other during his most recent physical examination of the Gul eight months ago following Dukat's emotional collapse, as he had never found one before; their Cardassian tailor-spy Garak was a different and another story.

Bashir also disputed any excessive misuse, or abuse of any chemical or natural substance by Dukat, narcotic, certainly out of the question. To the contrary, vehemently opposed to any physical exertion beyond waggling his tongue, Gul Dukat was surprisingly physically fit, strong even. Quite strong. Athletic, if he cared to be outside of his or anyone else's bed, which Dukat didn't care to be, quite satisfied with being tall enough, tight enough, for a man rapidly approaching sixty. Who did that sound like? Oh, yes. Shakaar Adon, the elder.

Odo recalled his competition. To think he just got rid of one of them only to end up with Number Two. Why did he find he preferred Dukat? Probably because Dukat wasn't competition, not with Major Kira. To where Dukat might glean Kira's attention, he'd yet to secure her affection and never would. Shakaar Adon, the younger, managed both. It remained to be seen how well his uncle fared. From the sounds of Kira's discussion with Sisko and him earlier, and Odo didn't like how it sounded, obnoxious and overbearing easily transposed into exciting and thrilling. Definitely Odo found himself thinking of and preferring Kira's vehement description of a Bajoran version of Dukat, simply tempered and tanned with dancing blue eyes and white hair, rather than the dancing light in Kira's eyes that betrayed her interest in the outlaw calling himself Anar.

Back to the outlaw Dukat who was leaden gray (greenish-gray to some optical nerves, hues of rancid purple to others), watery-eyed and black-haired. Obsessive, compulsive, about everything he did, or didn't do, their equally obsessive-compulsive Doctor Bashir insisted, mentally, Dukat was simply nuts. A manic-depressive schizophrenic sociopath with a psychotic personality. _Criminally insane was something for the UFP courts to decide though Bashir found himself in agreement with the idea of Dukat being a menace to society._

Sisko, on the other hand, had no idea what Odo was talking about, certainly not at all what he was thinking. Why Dukat's name was even mentioned, or brought into the conversation. Odo grunted one last time. "Nine o'clock? My office?"

"We'll be there, Constable," Sisko promised for Jake and Nog.

Odo believed him and moved on to round up the remaining ninety-six or so derelicts of society once their bruises and bumps were tended to and make room for any real patients who might happen along; one did. A Bajoran in his sixties who was eating a late dinner and developed a sudden and fairly uncomfortable episode of indigestion.

"Where?" Quark was quickly alert to the Bajoran's voiced complaint even if no one else was paying attention.

"Some Bolian restaurant," the man grimaced, new to the station and having forgotten the name.

Quark snorted. "That figures. They kill more in a week than I do all year. War, pestilence and terrorist attacks aside."

"I'll remember that," the Bajoran agreed.

"You do that. Need a nurse?"

The Bajoran eyed him. "You're not a nurse?"

"No," Quark sneered, "but you're close. Bartender. Quark's the name. Stop in once you're done here. We have a package promo for first time patrons. One price gets you everything. The bar, dinner, and the gambling admission. Holosuites are extra, but most feel it's worth it."

"Sounds interesting," the Bajoran admitted, "but right now I think I'll take that nurse."

"Deal. You stay there…well, sit there," he agreed as the Bajoran decided to slide down the wall and sit on the floor. "I'll be right back." He hobbled off to grab the first blue jumpsuit that crossed his path. "Are you a nurse?"

"No," Ortiz said. "And I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to wait your turn."

"I don't need a turn," Quark assured. "I was already here last week; one of the early ones. Come on, you're something. You've got a guy over here who's sick enough to think I'm you. Sounds like food poisoning to me."

"Well, then I guess he better get in line," Ortiz removed his grubby little Ferengi hand from her sleeve.

"Okay so you're cute," Quark said as she walked away. "That and a strip of latinum. Trust me, I know this. I deal in cute…maniacs, but cute." He limped back to the Bajoran. "Just me. They're a little busy right now but I'm working on it."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure," Quark assured. "I've been telling them they need to close that place down before something like this happens. Maybe now they'll listen."

"Maybe," the Bajoran closed his eyes.

Quark waited. "You can open them. Hello," he poked the Bajoran in the shoulder with the tip of his cane. "I'm saying you can open them."

The Bajoran did, not for very long and not very wide. Quark could be wrong but guy really didn't look right. "Hello!" he turned his grating nasal bellow on the crowd. "What do you have to do? Die to get some attention around here?"

"Somewhat extreme, isn't it?" Odo drawled from above his head.

"Not me," Quark sneered, "him. The one on the floor…not that one on the floor, this one on the floor; the Bajoran; that Bajoran, not that Bajoran, this one. He's not with them he's with him; alone. He just came in…fell in," he nodded as Odo stooped to have a look. "He was at the Bolian restaurant…I told you about that place, didn't I? But, noooo. I'm just being Ferengi, like I have a choice in the matter. Well, there's your proof. Food poisoning. Am I right, or am I wrong?" 

"Are you sure you're not dating her?" Leeta surveyed Bashir suspiciously.

He smiled. "Positive. Though I maintain that's hardly why you're upset anymore than it's to do with Quark -- or is it Quark?" 

She ignored him, briefly. Her head turned away, her chin set and held at a cocky and stubborn angle so he'd know she was ignoring him. "I told that stupid Quark and Garak trying to weasel information out of Julian by fixing him up on a date, it's not going to work."

"Makes sense," Bashir agreed in principle.

"Humph!" she snorted. "I'll say it makes sense." She fell silent for a moment again, eyeing him and moving on to complain about the dying platter of Acamarian legumes otherwise known as parthas ala Yuta. "I told them Julian's not even here. I _saw Julian. I said __hello to Julian on the Promenade. He already had his dinner with him."_

"Yes, well, actually," Bashir cleared his throat, still convinced they weren't getting to the heart of the trouble, "I was in Quark's briefly -- to order dinner. Quark was being creative, though he did cancel the request, apparently a moment or two too late…That's reasonable, isn't it?" he chanced.

"What am I a maid now, too?" she insisted. "No one can put it back in the replicator? They took it out, but they can't put it back in? I already have a husband, you know. Not that anyone would know this. But I do have a husband, believe it or not."

That was an odd and mystifying association. "Oh?" Bashir said.

"That's just what I said," Leeta nodded fervently. "_'Oh?''Uh, huh.' __'Why?'Did it get me anywhere? No__. And it won't either -- __wrong!" she jammed him emphatically in the chest with her nail. "I want to know, Mister Julian Bashir. It's just not fair! You know how I get!"_

She was starting to cry, not in anger, but in true aching sadness. "Well, yes, I do know," Bashir agreed quickly though confounded by what she meant. 

"He's never here," she wailed, gesturing wildly in her upset frustration. "He's gone and back and gone again and all he ever says is _'um, nope, can't tell you'!"_

"Rom!" she insisted in case Bashir was having difficulty figuring out who she was talking about, which Bashir wasn't, just why. "And it's okay if he tells me you're leaving again tomorrow, which no, it isn't. Oh, no, it isn't!"

"Yes, well," Bashir said, "I can respect why you might find that upsetting -- "

"Of course I find it upsetting!"

That's what he was saying. "However, I'm also sure you know Rom is hardly meaning, or doing anything malicious or underhanded -- "

"I want to know!" she grabbed him by the collar. "Rom never left when he worked for Quark, never."

Other than probably an occasional trip home or Earth to visit Nog once his son entered Starfleet Academy, Bashir really wouldn't know, and neither would it have been significant to Leeta at the time. Now it was. He understood what she meant by 'knowing how she is' or could be. That would be lonely. An ordinary emotion, quite commonplace that she wouldn't like and not really understand why she had to have, feel, or experience it. Little to do with being spoiled, everything to do with her childlike characteristic that could be both charming and irritating. Rom was no better in that area. His personality, outlook and innocence so attuned with Leeta's it was a galactical wonder why the two of them hadn't discovered each other before they did.

Bashir moved to tell her that, reassure her again how Rom would never intentionally dream to be hurtful or distant. How it might only seem like he was absent more often since resigning as Quark's stooge and joining O'Brien's engineering team. A role for which the bumbling Rom was surprisingly suited and truly remarkably adept, excelling far beyond anyone's imagination. A natural. Another one of those gifted idiot savants astounding and defying the critics. 

"Well?" Leeta demanded.

Bashir blinked. "Well what?"

"Julian!" she swatted him. "I want to know where you and Rom are going!"

He stared at her, as he stared the pieces of the confusing puzzle all suddenly started to fall into place. Of course he wasn't going anywhere with Rom, as of course he had been with Rom, even if he hadn't been with Rom exactly, Rom had been there aboard the _Defiant. On its initial trip to the Bajoran outer colonies to deposit the Ark with its passengers and field team, and on its return voyage to secure the runabout and crew._

"Oh, for goodness sake," Bashir straightened up from his stoop next to her to rest back on his heels. Of course Rom was chosen to accompany them not only for his engineering skills but also his trustworthiness. It was what one might call a "top secret affair".It wasn't something Rom could, or should discuss with anyone, and he was not only sure Rom was aware of that, he knew Rom was proud to be involved. In his ignorance, almost boastful and gleeful that he couldn't say anything, oblivious to the frustration it inspired in Leeta.

"Julian," Leeta whimpered, her lower lip starting to quiver again, but then she wasn't only angry about what she couldn't understand she was frightened of it and for Rom. Quark's she could understand. The recurring joke about the Ferengi bar continuing to be a hotspot for political and social intrigue with Quark having to offer hazardous duty pay as a job perk to entice prospective employees was a joke in one regard, and not a joke in others. Intrigue and hazardous duty aboard the _Defiant was something else entirely, and not anything Leeta could begin to comprehend only that Rom was involved and she wasn't. _

"Yes, all right…" Bashir's arm went around her consolingly, urging her down off her chair to sit beside him on the floor. "But first let me assure you Rom and I aren't going anywhere tomorrow…"

"Oh, yes, you are," she corrected, her beautiful face contorting again in a mugging parody of her husband who she didn't mean to ridicule only imitate. _"'Oh, yup, tomorrow.'"_

"No, not tomorrow," Bashir maintained kindly tomorrow was a misunderstanding or an attempt on Rom's part to tease her out of her blue funk. "Unless by some miracle Kira has managed to convince Captain Sisko without my medical logs, and if she has, I would think I would have also been notified, not only Rom, which I haven't been."

"But I don't want Rom to go to Cardassia," was her pressing point. "It's so dangerous, Julian, it really is."

Bashir smiled. Dangerous was a given. Oddly enough however, having been to Cardassia Prime once or twice too often he had to admit he found the impoverished world and its citizens surprisingly different from its ruling military minority with its influence and stench nevertheless distinct. Hardly daring to call them friendly, they were noticeably civilized and rather peaceably mellow. Uncomfortably sheep-like in their devotion and their beliefs; a herd mentality one might say. Severe in their dress and serene in their public demeanor. Not exactly how one might expect to find an ancient world of intellects, artists, and architects, a billion or so strong. But it was who they were and continued to be a hundred millennia after the fall of the First Hebitian civilization their direct ancestry also believed by some to be the root of the Bajoran civilization, making the Bajorans and the Cardassians cousins at the very least to each other's marked annoyance.

"Is that where Quark and Garak think we were?" Bashir asked. "Cardassia Prime?"

"Of course," she scoffed.

"They're wrong," Bashir assured. "The border of Cardassian space, perhaps, but no further. Captain Sisko's interest in escorting Janice and Anon also included the safe escort of Janice's Bajoran family home…" he hesitated slightly. "As difficult as that might be for some to fathom, Janice's adopted people are Bajoran, to where her husband clearly isn't. Who Anon is, quite possibly more unbelievable than what he is."

"Who is he?" she huffed, either her intelligence or her ignorance prompting her to question what she already knew.

"Yes, well, Dukat's son at the very least, quite obviously," Bashir agreed. "As is Pfrann…Leeta, listen to me, because I just may need your assistance, never mind only Rom's. There's a little girl on Janice's home world -- the only surviving child of a brutal Klingon attack that quite literally annihilated her people; there are only thirty-five survivors in all. Nadya's very sick and I want to petition Captain Sisko to bring her here to DS9 for treatment. Apart from it would be nice if Nadya and her mother could stay with a Bajoran family while here, I need a Bajoran family for Nadya. I need a cover. Some way to forestall having to explain who she and her mother are. Someone to pretend they are her family whom she is simply visiting. For all the truths Janice told about her people and her world there were a few details she neglected to mention."

"Maquis," Leeta nodded, having been there in the amphitheater with the rest of them throughout the Chief's hearing. "I figured that."

"Yes," Bashir said. "Should there have been any doubters among us I seem to recall Sian, Anar's son, making that rather formal announcement, along with Anon's rather formal declaration of protection."

She shrugged. He wasn't quite sure why she shrugged away Anon and Pfrann Dukat's association with the Bajoran Maquis, but she did. "He was always saying things like that; not about the Maquis," she clarified, since there was no such entity as the Maquis during the Cardassian occupation, they came after. "But he was always saying things like that, about unity and brotherhood; not that I ever believed him."

"Dukat?" Bashir guessed. Uncertain what other silver-tongued slime she could be talking about.

She shrugged again. "I didn't. But who knows. Maybe Anon's different; he looks different. Sounds different."

"And he'd have to be quite a bit different, yes," Bashir agreed. "Leeta, Janice's father Anar is Shakaar Adon's uncle. Nadya is Anar's granddaughter."

She looked at him, he couldn't say as he blamed her. "Yes," he nodded. "That's why Rom hasn't been able to say, or tell you anything. He's under orders not to. And neither can you say anything. Whether you agree, or disagree with who and what they are, you can't say a word."

"Maquis?" she whispered that much. "Shakaar Adon's family is Maquis?"

"Well, I don't know about his family," Bashir admitted. "I wasn't even aware he had a family, certainly not an immediate or surviving one."

"Yes, they're dead," Leeta nodded. "They're all dead."

"Well, clearly this particular branch isn't," Bashir sighed, no more clear about what it was about the entity Shakaar that had its wearers prevailing where so many others around them failed, than the Shakaars were about what it was about the entity Dukat.

"Leeta, please," he beseeched her, also not quite sure why he was divulging any of this to her other than for her own sake he couldn't have her smashing bars, hostesses or security officers because she felt grossly neglected and left out. "All I do know is there is a very sick child out there regardless, and I need your help. A place for the child to stay, and, yes, a small token of relief to offer Captain Sisko from what would have to be monstrous concerns for her safety and everyone else's. Even still, I swear to you, neither I, nor Rom, are leaving tomorrow to go anywhere. I wish I were. A few days, yes, if I'm lucky and Captain Sisko agrees…a few days," he smiled, "if I'm not. Will you help me? At least by keeping the secret for however long such a secret can be kept?"

"I'll do it," she patted his chest in her baby-doll manner and child-like way.

He didn't dare, or even try to ask her why in the name of the Prophets, he just closed his eyes with another sigh, that one relieved. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you." The timing perfect if nothing else as Michelle was in the doorway trying not to appear impatient or urgent in her request for his attention as he leaned forward and planted a grateful kiss on Leeta's cheek.

"Sorry," Michelle apologized for what could be viewed as an untimely intrusion.

"Not at all," Bashir climbed to his feet with a helping hand for Leeta. "I'll be right there."

"Thank you," Michelle said and left.

Bashir smoothed Leeta's ravaged hair and tried to straighten the torn shoulder of her outfit, which he couldn't. There was simply not enough of it left. "I'm also serious when I say no more fighting with Quark, Viola or anyone. After all, discounting all this turmoil you've been feeling over Rom, is it really that important who wears what? Whether it's the same color, a different one, or one similar?"

"Yes," Leeta assured without having to give it a second thought.

Bashir nodded. "Yes, well, in that case then I daresay she'll change without having to be asked twice, or possibly at all…" he paused.

"What?" Leeta said.

"Nothing," Bashir shook his head. "Only that I think that's the first time I ever kissed you and felt friendship, true friendship, nothing more or less." 

She had no idea what he meant. "It's a compliment," he promised, thanked her again and left to find Michelle tapping her toe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"Taking it a little literally, aren't you?" Faraday chastised Bashir's approaching grin, not that it was her place to, but she commonly indulged herself when it suited her.

"You mean Leeta? My bedside manner? Yes, well, I've always taken it rather literally, selectively anyway, you know that…what's going on?" he took the padd she plopped in his hand. "Not with Leeta, I know what's going on with her. With you? Whomever? What do you need, other than some assistance in clearing out the rest of these social outcasts? Not even sure why Odo brought half of them other than to further his obscure point of equality."

Michelle nodded. "You've a Bajoran male in the main theater, unidentified, but then he was unconscious by the time we got to him."

"I don't like the sound of that," Bashir assured, "unless you're also about to tell me it was through no fault of our own."

  


"I don't know," she said, trying to be fair. "Can we tell our heart attacks from our vagrants without a tricorder?"

"We can if we're in the vicinity and paying attention," Bashir handed her the padd. "Who we're talking about is obviously Ortiz; you certainly can't be talking about Doctor Hamilton…who I daresay is in attendance, not only Ortiz. From the looks of that preliminary, the man's not only reasonably young, he's in a rather bad way."

"Very bad," Michelle said. "I would be surprised if they weren't looking at cardiac replacement once they got in there."

Bashir started out for the operating theater. "Where's Doctor Dupo-Frey? We can't all be on Bajor, on holiday, or wherever. Not but two weeks after a damn terrorist attack. Still conceivable the station stands to be at considerable risk even if we aren't at yellow alert."

It was actually much closer to three weeks, but why be a pissant about things? "He's on his way," Michelle assured.

"First one?" Bashir queried Ortiz after relieving Doctor Hamilton to return to the Infirmary and he joined her at the table. 

"First Bajoran," she agreed. "Do you…?" she wondered if he wished to take over.

"No, that's all right, you're both doing fine," Bashir nodded with a close eye on the readings. 

"There's no excuse for this," Ortiz said bitterly, disgusted by the extensive corrosion of the Bajoran's heart.

"The Cardassian Occupation you mean?" Bashir smiled back at her.

She looked at him over her surgical mask. He nodded again. "You're quite right. Stress and poor diet can take its toll. Fortunately we're equipped to offer our visitor a bit more than a pulmonary support unit and a comfortable ride home to Bajor for cardiac replacement."

Three hours later he threw his surgical gown in the hazardous waste disposal, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice as he turned on Ortiz. "Don't you ever pass judgment on a patient of mine again. Are you mad? That man could hear and absorb everything you said.A first semester medical student understands and appreciates that."

Ortiz smiled. "Then we graduate to the reality of spending four hours caring for a patient who couldn't care less for himself. One who refused to accept his responsibility, regardless of the underlying cause, willfully choosing to continue neglecting his health. It's all right. You have your opinion, I have mine, and you're right. He's lucky we were here. He may get lucky again. Who knows. I'm more interested in you inviting me to breakfast…or is that inappropriate too?"

Bashir looked at her. "I'll be honest with you, Doctor -- "

"You're not sure why someone with my talents would feel she has to seduce her instructor to get ahead," she interrupted him with a knowledgeable nod, apparently having heard it before.

"No," Bashir replied, "I wouldn't be. Particularly since from my brief observation you are at least talented."

"Just insecure," she interrupted him again to laugh at his annoyance. "You're wrong. I'm not insecure, though you apparently are. I don't have to seduce you. It might just be something I want to do?"

"I'm not interested," Bashir said plainly. "Admittedly that probably is what qualifies your invitation to be inappropriate beyond the fact that I am your superior.You are here for a six-week internship, not to find a husband, mate, or weekend date. Your general attitude, not only toward me, but most importantly toward your patients is abrasive and disrespectful, and quite alarming. Regardless of your talents, I'm not convinced practical medicine is, or should be your field. My recommendation is that you use the next six weeks to reevaluate your motives and expectations behind choosing Starfleet. That will certainly be my recommendation to Captain Sisko as well as Starfleet Medical's Board of Advisors." 

He stopped short of threatening to charge her with harassment if she didn't desist, exited the changing area, irritated, unconvinced he wasn't protesting a little too loudly, couldn't be cited for exaggerating, unfairly allowing his personal feelings to interfere. Unwanting to say anything more, and not certain he hadn't already said too much with that opening about how it was only inappropriate because he wasn't interested, to where if he were it would be nothing more than a social exchange, harmless and common.

"In a pig's eye," Bashir sputtered, far less candid and offering his true opinion on his stride past Michelle. "Arrogant little witch, manipulative. For whatever her reasons, whatever her game…" He almost walked straight into Worf as he crossed the threshold onto the Promenade.

Worf halted in his determined march for the Infirmary, mute and momentarily uncertain how to proceed. He did not expect to come upon Bashir, though he was there to see Bashir. That was a contradiction and Worf frowned, aware of, and as confused by the range of conflicting emotions churning inside of him. Ones, for which, he had decided Bashir was responsible, involved with Jadzia to the extent that he was promoting her maintained distance from her husband. Worf knew why, as he continued not to know why Jadzia would buy into Bashir's deceptive line when she knew it was manipulation, and would only result in inflaming Worf's annoyance.

Worf knew what he thought, and he did not like what he thought. Liking it less when he entered their quarters aboard the station at 0500 almost exactly, prepared to apologize in his stiff way for his unexpected all-night duty schedule that wasn't exactly unexpected but he was not at liberty to divulge that, or why. It didn't matter. Dax wasn't there to hear the apologetic explanation. She was absent, as she had been absent from her husband's quarters since the time of their initial discord _prior to her disembarking aboard the Ark for the Bajoran colony Dyaan IX, a period of time that was now almost two weeks in length. A discordant note that should have been resolved and long over, which it was not. It was not over at the time she left, intensified and aggravated during her field mission, expanding far beyond her disagreement with his disapproval over Bashir's bawdy idea of friendship upon her return to the __Defiant, and subsequently the station, but not her husband._

Worf stood in the emptiness of his quarters as he stood in the dwindling hubbub of the Promenade now, convinced Jadzia could be nowhere except with Bashir and confounded to find out she was not. That discovery rocked the foundation of his thinking; it made no sense.

"Yes?" Bashir said somewhat impatiently to Worf's abrupt and obvious silence.

Worf huffed, regaining his stoic composure and advising Bashir with certainty, "I am looking for Jadzia."

"Who?" Bashir almost said, as beset with a convulsion of emotions as Worf. To the extent that reality wasn't necessarily reality and certainly dramatically removed from reasonable or rational. Obviously so since he certainly knew who Jadzia was, what he couldn't seem to understand however was why Worf might be asking him where she was. Clearly she wasn't with him. Half-tempted to also retort something snide like "Nothing up my sleeve" he didn't, choosing instead to dismiss Worf's announcement of Jadzia being MIA with a vague wave of his hand. "No, sorry, haven't seen her. I've been in surgery -- have you tried the science lab?"

"She is not in the science lab," Worf assured, having combed it thoroughly for any evidence apparently from the way he sounded.

"Oh, well, can't say then," Bashir said thoroughly disinterested in pursuing the conversation and extraordinarily piqued because he also knew where Jadzia wasn't, and that was in his quarters any longer, regardless of where else she may or may not be.

That understanding, hardly any sort of revelation, not only fueled his annoyance over spending the evening with Ortiz rather than Jadzia, it furthered his annoyance with having to waste any more time with Worf.He turned away for the turbolift, bitter and morose and continuing to think utterly irrational things like Jadzia was Worf's wife and if Worf couldn't keep track of his wife, was there a particular reason why Worf thought he, Julian Bashir, could, or should be able to?

His quarters were dark, including the console. Jadzia long gone and probably convinced he had contrived Faraday's call for assistance. Why she would think this he didn't know other than she knew him and there was a twenty-five year old blonde resident at stake otherwise known as fair game, fresh prey.

"Damn it all," Bashir sat heavily, and briefly down at his console before he decided he was physically exhausted not only emotionally and therefore couldn't begin to make sense to himself or anyone else. It had been a long and chaotic two weeks, exhilarating in many ways, debilitating in many others. He stood up to accidentally kick against one of her carelessly discarded boots he didn't even realize was there. He did now.

"Jadzia?" he stared from the ankle-high shoe toward the door to his bedroom. Uncertain who else's foot might fit and fill the boot other than another Trill, and still finding it harder to believe she had chanced everything from discovery, to exposure, to Worf's wrath, to spending the night alone, rather than she was out and wandering the station in her stocking feet.

She was in bed, asleep and on her stomach, facing the single harsh light, his stuffed, childhood bear upside down and pushed aside, a data padd held loosely in her hand. He remained braced in the frame of the doorway for a moment, breathing in the peace that seemed to overtake him before the electrifying surge of excitement. His head dipped and he relinquished his station in the door, silently slipping out of his jumpsuit, and down under the sheet next to her. Quietly ordering lights out as his hand touched her shoulder and his mouth kissed the frame of spots outlining her hair. She stirred immediately, releasing the data padd, a groggy smile in her voice as she turned over into his arms.

"What time is it?" she wondered.

"Late," Bashir admitted softly. "Extremely. 0500? 515? As quiet as the Infirmary was earlier, it was bedlam."

"It happens," she agreed.

"So it does. Official duty call's at 0700. You?"

"0700," she nodded.

"Barely enough time for a shower and a cup of breakfast tea," he lamented.

She smiled. "I like the idea of the shower."

Her arms closed around his neck and he was both right and wrong about being able, or not being able to make love to her in an hour. One hour and thirty minutes later he lay heavily back against the wall, Dax pressed tightly to him, the two of them dressed and steps away from his quarter's door. The fact that they could commit a physical act in record-breaking time more stimulating than fulfilling, and either way as quickly as the ninety minutes had passed, he desperately wanted the last of them to linger into being forever.

"You're going to be late," Dax mentioned before they were.

"Extremely," Bashir wished, wondering as he kissed her how he could have ever doubted, he didn't know, her commitment perhaps? To him? Them? Her body and her as hungry for and loving toward him as he was for her, her flesh unmarred or marked by any beastly encounter with Worf. Ironically he couldn't say the same for his brief encounter with Leeta's Cardassian handcuffs that left a brutal, and previously unrealized abrasion along his thorax. 

"Should I ask?" Dax had inquired amused.

"Or touch," Bashir winced in uncomfortable answer as she touched him. Appreciating one of the reasons it seemed difficult to breathe was because it was slightly painful to breathe. His muscle and bone bruised though otherwise fine and quickly forgotten under her gentle stroke. Right now though she was laughing lightly for a different reason and he was smiling.

"Dinner?" he asked. "Tonight? Quark's? 2300 or so? We can take a late break from detailing the last of Janice's inventory. Congratulate ourselves for all our hard work. Plan our strategy for proving or disproving her theory?"

"Or even deciphering the compositions and figuring out what we have," Dax said.

"Yes," Bashir said. "All while dreaming of and wanting to make love to you."

"Sounds manageable," Dax nodded in the affirmative as far as dinner even if she couldn't guarantee the rest of the night. 

"Take a break and get some rest later," she made a point to advise before she left.

"Take a break and tuck me in?" he countered with an invitation.

"No…" She laughed as she left. Already five minutes late for Ops duty, she bustled into her quarters for a quick change of clothing, pulling her hair loose as she brushed through the door to halt. Worf turned around from his perplexed and pensive stance in the middle of their living area. 

_ _

_Where did she think he had been? Where did she think he would be? Flashed through Dax's mind as her smile flashed, filling her cheeks, hearing herself announce, "Ninety percent complete. I'm not sure Benjamin could ask for more."_

She spoke of Lange's inventory, explaining herself without explaining where. Worf's attention followed her as she ran hastily past him for the shower and a change out of yesterday's uniform she still wore. He could tell by its appearance, he could tell by its smell. The aroma she carried with her was salty, sweet, Human, antiseptic, feminine, Bashir's. Who lied when he said he had not seen Jadzia, two hours ago now, whether he saw her before, or saw her after.

He saw her both. The smell was recent, fresh, close. Lingering in the air after she left to try and wash it away with the water Worf could hear running. She had been in the medical lab with Bashir, as Worf suspected, not the science lab where Bashir attempted to detour him. Not in Quark's, the Replimat, in counsel with Captain Sisko, Major Kira, or Keiko O'Brien, over their scheduled return to the Bajoran outer colony Dyaan IX. 

Bashir said more than he realized, either that or Worf heard more than Bashir said. The fragile, frail Human, angry, hostile, begrudging, flustered, for reasons only he knew as he exited the Infirmary to meet the towering powerful Klingon and stare him down with the arrogant glint in his eye. Jadzia, flustered, startled, almost frightened, now. Worf took a step toward the shower and stopped to turn on his heel.

He was on duty aboard Ops ten minutes late, Jadzia ten minutes behind him. Captain Sisko understanding and permissive, aware Worf had spent the evening and overnight hours diligently working beside the Chief, determined to ready the _Styx for departure today. Sisko would take late, if he had to. O'Brien's latest estimate was early evening when he finally broke to take a needed two, three, or four-hour break, two hours after Worf. Not because he was tougher than any Klingon, but because he was still mulling and muttering over his mind what to say to his wife Keiko when he saw her, if he saw her, if she would even speak to him; he'd find out._

Sisko exhibited the same understanding for Dax when the turbolift announced her hurried arrival for duty twenty minutes late. Presuming she'd spent the better part of her evening endeavoring to complete cataloging Lange's inventory while Bashir spent his time dodging slurs, hisses, and spits, and probably an occasional fist or two, as he worked to cool and treat the heated tempers steaming up the Infirmary. It was an event Worf knew nothing about. The Captain equally oblivious as to why he should make a point of mentioning it, and therefore he did not, or had not yet. The only point Sisko might find himself reflecting on regarding the Infirmary was the looks of it at the time he left and the knowledge that the task of treatment and cleanup would probably take Bashir the bulk of the night.

From his brief glance over the extent of Lange's inventory at the time of its arrival aboard the station, he highly doubted if Dax would meet her goal alone, and he'd barely the heart to tell her she didn't have to. Instead, while she might not have all the time in the world, she had the rough equivalency of six weeks. His smile held a secret when he turned away from conferencing with Kira at her console to greet Dax good morning.

Absorbed by what was on his mind, Sisko failed noticing Dax avoiding eye contact with Worf, her rapid pace slowing as she approached her station, her smile feeding Sisko's innocent belief as it strove to feed her husband's; quietly. She spoke too softly for Worf to hear her return comment which appeared to be satisfactory to the Captain.

"Worf doesn't ask for much," Dax disclosed as the reason behind her tardiness, "only an occasional check in."

"Reasonable, Commander," Sisko nodded. "Entirely reasonable…If you would please," he indicated her console, rocking her with the deadly calm request, "call Doctor Bashir to join us in my office." He turned away with a silent gesture for Worf to precede him. 

"That didn't take long," Dax admitted under her breath as Benjamin walked away. The eye contact she avoided was Kira's as her hand touched the console to give Julian the fright of his life.

"I didn't expect to see you until noon or so," Michelle's plump grin appeared over Bashir's eye-opening cup of Klingon raktajino that was searing hot and black and desperately in need of something sweet.

"Yes, well, if it's at all possible," Bashir pleaded, "you don't see me until noon or so. I really must get cracking on this project of Dax's…For God's sake we have a scheduled meeting with Captain Sisko at 1000." He stretched out a grisly, stomach-turning row of Dax's contaminated samples that for some mysterious reason made him think of pastries as they sat on his desk. Purple, gooey, pink, pastries, delicious and waiting to be devoured. He grinned at Michelle whose froth of graying hair also reminded him of a pastry. "It's fair to say I'm not at all prepared," he confessed to being a derelict in his own right.

"It's possible," she patted his arm, deciding for Doctor Dupo-Frey that he was refreshed, not only bronze, from his two week holiday on some sizzling Bajoran island resort and eagerly looking forward to diving right back into the thick of things whether he realized this or not.

"My God I love you," Bashir assured. "What are the chances of you disregarding nutritional value and finding us a dozen or so of some illicit anything for us to consume?"

"About as good as my extending my shift until 1000," Michelle picked up the hint for assistance with a twinkling wink and shrug.

"Definitely I love you," Bashir swore as he cheerfully answered Dax's unexpected though welcome call over his com badge. "Yes, Dax? I'm here. I swear. In the Infirmary. Working. Michelle can testify…" he called Michelle back from leaving with a wave. "I'll be prepared."

"He'll be prepared," Michelle promised in support and harmony.

"See?" Bashir laughed.

Dax didn't, though she was calm in her startling reply. _"Benjamin wants you and I to meet with him and Worf in his office now."_

"Oh," Bashir said, his smile remaining in place. "Well, yes, all right…just a minute, let me make sure I have everything with me…I'm in my office…" his hand closed over the data padd that was either her compilation of Janice's inventory, or his medical log of the colony's inhabitants. It didn't matter. He picked it up to hold in demonstration for Michelle.

"I'll put a hold on those pastries," she agreed.

"Yes, please," he said. "And wish us luck."

"You'll do fine," she trusted him.

"I'll do my best," he assured.

She left and he touched his com badge verifying, "Dax?"

_"I'm here," she answered._

"Quite," Bashir forewent his badge, sitting down at his desk and activating the console's screen monitor. Where here was, was aboard Ops, at her station. She looked mildly bewildered and forcibly nonchalant. He looked openly perplexed and strongly concerned as he motioned for her to use her ear piece rather than the public com system of her console. She did and he was free to question her in privacy and heart-pounding fear. "Darling, what happened? Are you all right?"

"Nothing…" she shook her head slightly; and that couldn't be accurate. Clearly something had happened. 

"I don't know…" she carefully added what was probably far more accurate as his eyes narrowed in inspection.

"Yes, well, it's all right," Bashir reassured confidently and soothingly. "Whatever it is, it's all right; we'll work it out."

He meant it. Dax wasn't sure why that should seem surprising, or why she would have thought he wouldn't, didn't.

"Jadzia?" he said anxiously to her silence.

"Yes," Dax replied. "Yes, we will."

He smiled. "Good. I love you. I'll be right there."

It was a promise that he kept. Running, whether or not he flew, and since he couldn't fly, he did run, and no one would ever know by his appearance that he was remotely concerned about anything other than what he professed to be concerned about. That was the precarious health of a nine-year-old Bajoran child named Nadya.

The one risk he did take was joining her on Benjamin's small couch rather than occupying one of the two vacant seats directly facing the Captain's desk. Dax had avoided them, too, needing the comforting security of the arm of the sofa to support her. Understanding, much to her chagrin, she was nowhere near as adept as Bashir was in glossy, carefree lying. Remarkably inept, if she admitted it, which she did, to herself. She sat with her back to Worf, keeping her smile directed on Benjamin's somber expression. It was probably a guilty position from Worf's point of view. She seemed normal and natural to Sisko who seemed pensive and definitely wanting to talk. It was a long, quiet minute following Sisko's accepting nod that Bashir would be along promptly.

Julian was. His coffee in one hand, a data padd in his other. Cheerful and talkative and doing the unthinkable as he assumed his seat next to her on the couch.

That was dangerous, foolish, absurd. If she couldn't begin to lie to Worf or Benjamin with any hope or conviction, he couldn't begin to protect her or himself from Worf, and it was a position that put him directly between her and Worf standing silently to the rear of the office like a stone-faced sentinel.Dax's full attention shifted from Sisko to Bashir, sensing Worf's flex of annoyance, trying to keep the shock from registering on her face and her hand from grabbing for Bashir's arm in a frightened demand to know what he thought he was doing.

That was all right. Bashir was trying and succeeding in not patting her hand as he chatted on. Indulging himself and them for a minute or two with his typical, generally irrelevant insight and comments as he sat excitedly forward in his seat, his body hunched, his knees supporting his arms, his head bobbing in time with his prattle, largely directed at Sisko.

It was a defensive position, Dax realized. Poised and prepared to spring to his feet in a moment's notice. A purpose behind the difficult-to-follow, nervous-sounding line of chatter as it afforded him the time to survey their surroundings and situation that in the least were extraordinarily quiet. He mentioned this jokingly when he walked in. Something about the lot of them appearing lively, Kira's unenergetic stroll halting behind him.

"Major," Sisko invited Kira to have a seat as Bashir aimed for the couch.

She brushed it aside with her usual "I'm fine."

"Julian…" Dax wanted to say and did say, it sounding to her audience like her typical warning cue that Benjamin was tiring quickly of his nervous babble; he wasn't nervous. She knew that. He was breathless and excited to see her and very much in love. She stared at his slender, lanky physique that could be called scrawny, underweight, and undernourished. His raging energy and racing metabolism consuming everything he ate at warp speed, turning the nutrients, vitamins and proteins back into just that, more energy. It was a completely acceptable feedback cycle according to him, unmindful of the rigors it placed on his heart; it didn't place rigors on his heart. His heart was as solid as a rock, the same as the rest of him. He wasn't boyish. He was masculine, adult. The grin was boyish grinning back at her, adoring and brightening the love in his eyes. Dax fell wholly in love with him at that moment. The last small piece of herself she held in reserve yielding to being swept off her feet, figuratively, even if Bashir couldn't quite manage it physically. She wanted to reach out and touch him, feel the comforting support of his arm around her.

That was fine. He wanted to reach out and touch her, he almost did. He almost beat them to it, said it for them, before them. How, yes, Jadzia had been with him. Though, no, he wouldn't say they were having an illicit affair as much as he would say they were very much in love. What could they say to that really? Either of them? Worf or Captain Sisko, or Kira for that matter who was probably just there to help keep the peace, which wasn't very likely and what concerned Bashir most of all. He was definitely in a defensive position and quite prepared to defend if necessary.

It wasn't. Actually, it turned out to be a good thing that he didn't say anything because it wouldn't have been so much as saying something first as it would have been saying it unnecessarily, jumping the gun, as the Humans might say.

"Yes, Doctor, yes," Captain Sisko was nodding and quickly losing interest as Dax predicted in Bashir's connected, though irrelevant mention of the Infirmary. "I was there."

"Yes, that's true, you were," Bashir's head cocked backwards and almost upside down as he smiled back at Dax seated next to him. "And, well, since you were, I don't suppose you would mind mentioning to Dax how I really didn't abandon her to working on the last of Janice's inventory alone?"

"Oh, well…" Dax smiled in return, "if you're talking about the Infirmary, I believe I may have heard a rumor…"

"Of how it was probably wiser, if not safer, to remain in the lab? That's very true," his eyes twinkled. He was cueing her. She couldn't believe it. He didn't say which lab, but he was cueing her. "Of course I have my suspicions curiosity got the better of you at some point -- can't prove it," he admitted. "But I do have my suspicions."

"Well," she teasingly pointed to the padd, "I can't prove it, but there's hope apparently Lange's inventory finally did manage to secure your attention?"

"Swear," he swore, "I was just settling in to work when you called."

"Um, hm," Dax said. "Meaning?"

"Well, meaning," he settled back to drink his coffee, drape his arm casually across the back of the couch behind her and include the office in his conversation, not only her, "this morning was really the first opportunity I had."

"I see," Dax said. "And what exactly did you say transpired between the time -- "

"I left the science lab and you fell asleep in the medical -- sprawled," he claimed and she laughed; she had to. "On the console?"

"You don't know that," she denied.

"I do know that," he assured. "I'll never say how I know that, or why."

"No," Dax agreed before he got too carried away with his inventive tale. "I believe we were talking about you?"

"So we were. And, well, let's see, what happened? A minor melee -- which you may have noticed Captain Sisko states to have been present during for a short while."

"I did," Dax nodded.

"A cardiac replacement?" Bashir offered with a grin. "Somewhat untimely and timely at the same time -- which reminds me," he sat up straight again, focusing on Sisko, "I'd like to talk to you about my resident Doctor Ortiz."

"Yes, Doctor," Sisko nodded, willing to talk about anything, and right now really wanting to talk about something specific. "All in due time."

"Yes, of course," Bashir apologized. "Sorry. I'm sure you've called us here for a reason?"

"So I did." Sisko paused a moment before he stood up with his sober, somber expression, pausing for another moment before he moved to round his desk.

_Yes, well, there's no reason to drag this out, you're quite right. Flashed annoyed through Bashir's mind and he almost said it out loud. He didn't though. He did however sit back, his arm returning to stretch itself across the back of the couch behind Dax. He almost put it protectively around her shoulders. Kiss her cheek reassuringly. He didn't though. He did watch Captain Sisko as he moved around to stand in front of his desk, facing Bashir and Dax, his back apologetically to Kira who looked generally bored._

Bashir wasn't bored. He was increasingly and rapidly growing less tolerant of what were clearly strained seconds of silence for whatever reason. He sat up suddenly straight again prepared to say whatever, whatever fleeing from his mind as Sisko as suddenly sat down on the edge of his desk, bursting into an expansive grin, chortling, "Congratulations. The results of your initial survey have proved impressive enough for First Minister Shakaar to request the UFP's assistance in conducting an extensive exploration of the region in question on the Bajoran colony Dyaan IX. That request has been approved with the UFP commissioning a field team for the period of one month…"

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

_One month. One surface month? One station? Federation? Bajoran? __One month! Bashir's brain screamed as he sat there too thunderstruck to say a word to Sisko nodding at him._

"That team will include you, Doctor Bashir, as well as you, Commander Dax," Sisko advised Dax also startled to silence by what she was hearing, "and Keiko O'Brien in her expertise as a botanist.

"Jake…" His nod and grin moved to Kira, "has volunteered his services as a field technician -- community service," he explained to her.

"Makes sense," she shrugged.

"Yes," Sisko thought so. As he was anticipating Odo would agree with the frame of thinking, as well as the sentence imposed as being fair and reasonable. If by chance Odo did not agree, Sisko would tell him to.

  


"I am aware, Doctor," Sisko returned to Bashir, "you have worked with Jake before. "

"Well, yes, that's true I have," Bashir sat back, still too confounded by what he was hearing to say much more than that. "Not as a field technician specifically, but yes, as a medical assistant."

"Very true," Sisko said. "Nog will be assigned to assist Major Kira with any necessary security measures. With nothing too dramatic being anticipated in the area of security, Nog should also find ample time to extend his services as an added field assistant to the science team."

"Yes, well, dramatic," Bashir interjected, starting to come alive. "About the only thing dramatic about the colony -- " He stared at Dax.

"Good question," she agreed.

"Quite. Damn good question," he assured. "What colony? For that matter…"

"What anything," Dax smiled at Sisko. "Make that everything."

"Quite," Bashir said. "For example what initial results? You haven't had time to review our initial results -- have you?" he frowned, thinking of the overnight hours since they returned to the station and Kira's opportunity to discuss matters, results, wants and desires with Captain Sisko. In turn with First Minister Shakaar, in turn the UFP, and have them all in agreement, quite literally within only a matter of hours?

"It would seem unlikely," Dax nodded, "particularly since we don't have any initial results."   
"So what?" Kira sat down with a shrug. "We'll get them."

Yes. Dax would imagine within a month's time chances were they would manage to "get something". "Still, it's very generous of you," she mentioned to Benjamin, carefully so as not to give him the wrong impression, or encourage him to rethink his decision, "to volunteer our services…"

"On a whim, Commander?" he grinned.

"You obviously don't think it's a whim," she agreed.

"No," he shook his head. "No, I don't believe it's a whim."

She thought. "In retrospect, Janice Lange would either have to be mad…"

"For reasons other than that, Commander," he assured.

She nodded. "Because there's a ring of truth to the tale as to how Janice Lange even became involved with the Bajoran-Cardassian caucus.Her petition to the Council of Ministers to extend her grant and include a botanist to assist her in her studies of her botanical ointment -- there is a Bajoran mummy. I imagine Kira's already mentioned that?"

"Yes," Sisko assured. "And that fact alone, Commander…" he had to say.

"Is almost unbelievable," Dax agreed. "What are the chances of a like, almost identical culture, certainly racially identical, developing on two completely different worlds, light-years from each other?"

"Extremely rare," Sisko understood. "I would think extremely rare."

Dax nodded. "Bajoran space exploration is only a thousand years old, not four."

"No," Sisko agreed.

"Yet the mummy is Bajoran," Dax smiled at Bashir. "Four thousand -- is that right?"

"Yes, actually. My estimation of the mummy's age was remarkably close to that determined by Janice. However, considering the limitations of the equipment I had available…"

"That is all scheduled to change also, Doctor," Sisko assured. "Mister Worf and Chief O'Brien have been working to install a science module in the runabout _Styx on loan to us from the UFP."_

"What?" Bashir glanced at Worf.

"With Major Kira's introduction of this issue of a child…" Sisko's upraised hand stopped Bashir from say anything further for a moment. "That has briefly delayed your anticipated departure from this morning to early evening as Chief O'Brien has had to make modifications to the supplied module to incorporate a fully equipped operating room."

"You're joking," Bashir said.

"No," Sisko was hardly joking. "I trust that should satisfy you temporarily?"

"Satisfy me?" Bashir repeated. "I can't believe it…as a matter of fact, I can hardly believe any of this. Dax is right. We don't, or didn't have any initial results, beyond the existence of the mummy, but no one knew about that…"

"Irrelevant, Doctor," Sisko shook his head, "as Major Kira said."

Yes, well, what Kira actually said was "so what".However Bashir supposed that could be roughly translated into meaning the same thing. "Why do I have this idea of community service as retribution is much of the issue?" he questioned.

"That idea also extends to the why behind choosing Nog, Doctor, yes."

"I presumed as much," Bashir said. "I meant First Minister Shakaar Adon."

Sisko smiled. "You would be right."

Bashir nodded. "Well, I suppose it's fair to say, what could he say?"

"Nothing," Kira assured.

"Quite," Bashir said. "Still, it's also fair to say that it took a great deal of confidence and trust on your part to arrange all of this prior to truly knowing anything."

"Not really," Sisko denied. "Trust and confidence only in that if anything was there you would find it -- which apparently you did. Four thousand years old," the idea fascinated him. "That is remarkable, Doctor, remarkable."

"Yes," Bashir agreed. "Probably best explained by an advanced peoples who either conducted some manner of trade with its less advanced neighboring societies, or plundered its neighboring societies for workers or slaves. The later Bajoran population of the planet can easily be explained by the Cardassian occupation throughout the sectors…which, speaking of, has Major Kira made you aware of the entire situation surrounding the settlement?"

"Much of it I would think, Doctor, yes."

"Including the fact that the current Bajoran population was fairly annihilated by the Klingon Empire, not the Cardassian Union?"

"It has been brought to my attention how that is a possibility, Doctor, yes. Though I would refrain from citing the Klingon Empire as being responsible whether or not the squadrons were Klingon…

"As I would, Doctor," his hand rose again in encouragement of diplomacy and tact, "keep in mind, the population you refer to is known to be Bajoran Maquis. A fact, entirely possibly known by the Klingon squadrons at the time of the raid, and while that doesn't make it right…"

"It also doesn't make it wrong," Bashir replied. "I disagree. But then I always disagree whenever someone's talking about people's lives. Apparently I'm not alone. Unbelievable as it may seem, and admittedly it is still quite unbelievable to me, Anon Dukat also disagreed."

He stood up, supporting his continuing disbelief for everything with a shake of his head. "Yes, all right. One month. That's an approximate six weeks sabbatical actually, considering the remote location. I'll have Michelle pull the duty rosters, make any necessary adjustment to ensure coverage is sufficient…which brings us back to the issue of Doctor Ortiz."

"An extra pair of hands?" Sisko smiled.

"No," Bashir said emphatically. "Thank you for the consideration, but no. I intend to discharge Doctor Ortiz. We can get into the whys later. Right now I'd like to have a look over our runabout -- _Styx, is it? Odd choosing." _

"To some Human literary historians, perhaps," Sisko concurred with the point already made by O'Brien. "To the rest of the galaxy, I would imagine a river is a river, and I would attach no significance to the choice."

"Comment only," Bashir reassured.

Sisko nodded. "You and Dax are welcome to tour the _Styx, Doctor. If you wouldn't mind however, clarifying what you mean by discharging Doctor Ortiz?"_

"Precisely that. From her duties. I don't like her attitude. Toward me is one thing, though I'd be kind if I said she wasn't insubordinate, because she is. What I really don't like is her attitude toward her patients. She's uncaring. Abrasive. Rude. They're a chore. A nuisance. Quite frankly, I'm not quite sure why she choose the medical field other than the mechanics are apparently something she can do."

"You've mentioned your concerns to her, I trust?"

"I have. Why?"

"We'll discuss it," Sisko promised. "I have a scheduled appointment with Constable Odo at 0900. Shall we say 1000? I believe I'm already on your schedule for that time. In the meantime, Major Kira can direct you and Dax to the _Styx. Answering any questions you may have. Regarding the mechanics of your departure, the __Defiant will be transporting the field team to a designated drop-off point, returning to secure you at the appropriate time."_

"Yes," Bashir said. "One would presume all of that. Actually, if someone just tells Dax and I, for that matter, Keiko, where the _Styx is, I'm sure we can find it ourselves. As we can tour its facility ourselves, asking any questions we may have, and offering any suggestions we may also have…Excuse me, but it sounds as if I might wish to discuss the matter of Doctor Ortiz now…"_

"We'll be outside," Dax stood up with a volunteering smile for Sisko.

"Thank you," Bashir said.

The door swished closed behind her, Worf, and Kira. Sisko eyed his highly irritated Chief Medical Officer."Well?" Bashir demanded. "Apparently you know something about Doctor Ortiz that I don't? Some sort of celebrity perhaps? A mother, father, uncle, aunt, distant cousin on the board who won't take too kindly to their little cherub being discharged? Well, I'm sorry, but I am not only within my authority to relieve any medical officer I deem unfit, I am obligated."

"Yes," Sisko agreed. "So is Doctor Ortiz well within hers to haul you up on charges of discrimination and harassment."

"What?" Bashir said. "That's preposterous."

"Maybe," Sisko nodded. "Probably…Does the word bitch ring any bells with you, Doctor?"

"Witch," Bashir corrected abruptly after a thought.

"She heard bitch," Sisko replied.

"I don't care what she heard," Bashir insisted, "I said witch. Manipulative witch, as a matter of fact, which was precisely how she was acting."

"Possibly," Sisko granted. "Probably…and inappropriate on your part, Doctor, either way."

"Oh, really," Bashir retorted. "I suppose it wasn't inappropriate of her that in the middle of my requiring she treat a patient with due respect the only response she can think of is to make a sexual advance toward me?"

Sisko looked at him.

"I'm quite serious," Bashir insisted, "she made a pass at me. I rebuffed it, of course. Flat out told her no. So, no, I can't see where I am guilty of any form of harassment, certainly not sexual -- but then again," he agreed heatedly, "for all I know, from her deranged point of view I may be guilty of harassment for the simple fact that I did rebuff her. Twice, mind you. Not once, twice!"

"Doctor…" Sisko hand was back up in the air.

"I'm telling you this is preposterous."

"And I am suggesting to you that this sounds very much to me like a personal problem. From what I am hearing from you, and what I have already heard from Doctor Ortiz this morning; a personality conflict, if you will. One resolved quite easily by the fact that you won't even be here."

"No," Bashir shook his head. "No, it isn't a personality conflict. I don't like the woman. That's very true. I want her out of my Infirmary, also very true."

"She will be," Sisko promised. "In six weeks. In the meantime I am requiring you trust, as I trust, that if there is truly anything wrong with Doctor Ortiz's approach to her patients, I will be advised of this immediately by Doctor Dupo-Frey, Doctor Hamilton, and so forth -- without!" he pointed. "The accompanying _witch. Is that clear?"_

"Until she kills one of them," Bashir said. "The man had a heart attack. He wasn't intoxicated; he had a heart attack. She was so obsessed with the fact that they were drunk, they were dirty, they were surly, that she didn't take the time to just listen. To just look and listen, and yes," he nodded, "much of that is training, some, part, _all. That's why she's here. To train, to learn, and in the meantime the man is lying on the operating table and she is removing his heart and the only thing she can think of to __say, mind you, is how this is all so unnecessary. How there is no excuse for the abuse the man has perpetrated against himself, and quite frankly even if that were true, at that point, at that time, it was none of her damn business! Least of all anything she had a right to say with her patient lying right there!"_

"Go to Dyaan IX, Doctor," Sisko offered quietly, "I'll take care of Doctor Ortiz."

"Thank you!" Bashir said and exited in a whirl.

"Better?" Dax asked when he spun out of Benjamin's office onto the Ops deck.

"Yes, much…I think," Bashir agreed flustered. "Probably. He said he would take care of it."

Dax nodded with a shrug. "Then I'm sure he will."

"Yes. Simply a matter of _how. It's all right. I'd rather not be bothered about it right now…more important things to think about," he grinned, aglow and wondering if she was thinking the same things, knowing she had to be._

Dax smiled. "Two minutes," she begged from Kira.

Benjamin looked up from his pensive pose, sitting on the edge of his desk when she reentered his office.

"Then I guess you won't be needing this," she held out her data padd with a twinkle.

"Your report?" Sisko replied. "Yes, please."

"It's really more of a journal," Dax explained as he took it. "A great deal of it opinion. Unfortunately there weren't too many facts available." 

"That's fine. I'm looking forward to hearing -- or reading your observations," he chuckled, his nose wrinkling in reassurance as he rounded his desk. "Opinion or theory, I should be the last one to criticize."

"That really was quite a risk you took in organizing all of this," she agreed.

Sisko shrugged. "Perhaps. If I was wrong and there was nothing of interest to the Federation or Bajor, all I had to do was stop everything right here."

Dax nodded. "With Shakaar taking the tongue lashing from the UFP for wasting more than their time."

"Exactly," he said. "As he is welcome to take to the praise. All part of the agreement, Commander, and quite frankly either way, I can't see where First Minister Shakaar could complain. Indeed, he is lucky, and he knows it."

"It's a sensitive situation," Dax understood. "Far beyond Janice Lange and Shakaar's knowledge of an impending terrorist threat to the conference."

"The issue of Anar," Sisko acknowledged, "remains very much unresolved. Uncertain as to the best resolve. Subjectively, while the foreseeable future will likely find the settlement absorbed as a Bajoran colony, it is entirely possible offers of clemency and immunity will not include Anar. Certainly not allow him to remain in a position of authority or control. Beyond that, I can only guess."

"Self-exile," she smiled. "Anar knows that. For everything he is and may have been he's not a fool."

"Debatable," Sisko's chin tipped. "However, given the alternatives and his claim to prefer anonymity to life in the spotlight, I also can't see where our Mister Anar could, or will complain."

"He may not." Dax considered Elise as the candidate to replace Anar as the town's Elder. A role she could see Elise assuming, one she could see her capable of doing. More stringent in certain areas probably where Anar was likely more lenient, personal behaviors, definitely, but also general routine.

She smiled again."However, whether or not an exchange of power at this time would be in our best interest or the colony's regardless of Anar's personal wants or preferences, is a crucial question…one, I have an idea," she offered, "Anar's also having difficulty answering. But then I'm not so sure his initial role as a Maquis leader wasn't cast upon him, probably due to his skills, among them organizational.

"I'm not so sure," she said, "he didn't at least try to rule from the background. Meaning, I'm not so sure how many people are aware of his true identity whether or not they are aware of his chosen name, other than those of a trusted nucleus -- that I suspect has grown in size, not shrank."

Benjamin was listening to her attentively. She indicated her journal. "It's all in there, including my opinion on Anar's ability to find his way to the station; Lange's shuttle. He'd like the reason to be more mysterious, probably to tease, possibly because he believes we'd like it to be more mysterious. In the meantime, his engineering skills are as adept as Kira's or the Chief's…which, yes," she admitted, "opens the door to where is Lange's shuttle?" Plausibly, it was either docked somewhere on Bajor Prime, waiting to be secured, or aboard Anon's Galor-battle cruiser, the _Tir, waiting to be returned. _

"Either would be reasonable," Sisko concurred when offered the choice.

"Though it is somewhat Romulan of him," she teased, "to expect to be able to rule effectively from behind closed doors."

"What works, works, Commander," Sisko granted. "Unmindful or how exactly or why. Whether the identity of the Romulan Praetor would ultimately be found to be a collective body rather than a single man or woman, for that matter a computer. It's an interesting correlation. Feasible an outsider, one or several, may adopt such an approach as their standard, or foundation, indeed, many have. You may be right our Mister Anar is simply one of them, inspired by a personal desire to 'remain behind the scenes'.His longevity, not withstanding the length of his chosen career, certainly supports your conclusion of some form of masked avenger."

"Opinion only," she laughed, her fingers tapping on her data padd he had placed down on his desk. "One that honestly hopes you can be as generous in your understanding of them. Whatever threat they once posed, they're survivors, Benjamin, barely. Persistent only in their audacity to hope when they are without hope. Julian's right about that and really most everything else he feels -- about the colony," she smiled, clarifying for herself as Alexis Ortiz flitted briefly across her mind. "For different, probably simpler reasons than Kira, but I know they both find the situation, particularly Nadya's, unacceptable and offensive."

Regarding Ortiz she refrained from commenting or asking. Not previously aware anything had transpired between Julian and Ortiz, though apparently something had, much to Julian's vexation, she was uncertain as to what would be her motive behind any inquiry.

"I appreciate and understand both Major Kira and Doctor Bashir's position," Sisko assured her. Though he had only heard one of them, he had an acute idea from Kira of what was, and would be Bashir's.

"I'm glad," Dax said. "I'm very glad."

He glanced at the data padd. "However, if you're hoping to somehow persuade me to excuse Anar or any of his group carte blanche-- "

"No," she said. "Separate, not excuse. The past from the present."

"Eighteen months isn't a very long time, old man," he reminded her gently.

She started slightly with his invocation of Curzon, his one-time close friend from the time of his days as a young cadet until the day of the Ambassador's death eight years ago. For the first time ever she felt herself wondering what Julian was asking her to wonder if now or ever, Benjamin, or anyone, were talking to Jadzia Dax at all? 

"It's a lifetime, Benjamin," she activated his console, Bajor Prime appearing on his monitor screen. A world of fifty million dead and twenty times that number of survivors, thriving or trying to on a planet of trillions of graves spread over however many lifetimes. Some better, some possibly worse.

"There are at least two thousand graves on Dyaan IX, Kira, Julian, and I calculate," Dax told him. "Possibly as many as five, possibly as many as ten. Very few of them I would think Klingon. There are thirty-five survivors. If there are any other inhabitants of that world they are in the same dire and primitive straits as the colony because they certainly didn't stop by to introduce themselves, or to check us out, which I would have thought they would have, if they were capable, or even out there. Can you imagine, Benjamin? Can you? I know you can, I know you have had to, and it's so very sad if it's nothing else. It's just so very sad."

He looked up at her trying to assimilate and understand what she was saying. Her smile flickered, changing the subject to some extent. "Which only leaves Jake -- I believe I understand your reasoning and choice of Nog."

"An effort to maintain confidentiality for the time being, Commander, of course."

"Yes," she said. "Though I admit I'm completely lost on this -- community service idea?"

His grin reemerged. "Before saying Jake's involvement in the field expedition was not exactly my idea -- "

"Now that I would have to say I already know," she laughed. "But then we are how many sectors away? How many light-years?"

"Enough," Sisko assured. "Certainly more than enough."

"However he is nineteen," Dax offered. "What can you really say? Or do?"

Something else Sisko would prefer not to have to admit. "Not too much really. Caution? Perhaps? Advice?"

"Threats of disowning, disinheritance, confinement," Dax nodded. "My goodness this sounds all too familiar; I think I've been through this before; I know I have. And the latter alternatives while tempting, really are a little too harsh."

"Yes," Sisko agreed, "they are certainly both. However, so is the idea of a suspended sentence rather than proposing community service as a reasonable alternative."

"Suspended sentence," Dax repeated.

"Jake and Nog were arrested during last night's melee at Quark's."

"I don't believe it," she said immediately.

"Thank you," Sisko said. "Neither do I, and quite frankly I'm not aware of anyone who does.

"Kassidy," Dax smiled, naming one who definitely wouldn't believe any such nonsense, and more than likely the one who initiated the suggestion of including Jake in the field expedition. Probably in an effort to soften Benjamin's fiercely adamant disapproval of the Maquis that in its intensity could threaten to cloud the issue of the colony he was attempting to resolve. Possibly as a way to offer him an objective, yet youthful, yet clear impression of the situation. It was a good idea. She thought about her journal and what she hoped to accomplish through it. Basically it was the same idea.

"Doctor Bashir," Sisko named another staunch defender of Jake and Nog. "Major Kira -- Constable Odo as well is hardly inclined to cite either of them with willful intent. That doesn't mean there doesn't have to be an examination into the facts or a reasonable and acceptable explanation. If you expect it from one it's accurate, and only fair that you have to expect it from everyone."

"What is the explanation?"

"Poor judgment," he would say. "Involving themselves when what they should have done was step back and let security do their job. Therefore, learning what one's natural instinct tells you isn't always the best, or correct action in this instance. Difficult to accept when one's friend or family member is involved, which was the case in that it was Leeta. Nevertheless it is a lesson that must be learned."

"Definitely a reasonable alternative," she supported imposing a session of community service. "Educational, as well. For both Nog and Jake; Jake has an interest in field reporting."

"Yes," Sisko agreed. "Now if only I could somehow forget that 'field' is in the heart of a colony of Maquis."

Dax laughed. "Former Maquis, now respectable farmers. Startled, clumsy, but enthusiastic about reviving the land and themselves. If there's a field, which there are a few scattered and struggling, they're the expected grain and vegetation, with the unexpected addition of grapes. Anar holds a fascination with cultivating vineyards. It isn't practical, but he's peculiar I would say, about his task. Devoted. Religious in tending. Reverent when he speaks of the idea. I'm not sure why -- but then, I'm not sure about a lot of things," she confessed with a pat of his arm as she left, "simply full of opinions."

"Well? Where to?" Bashir prodded Kira as they moved across the Ops deck, clamoring up the steps for the turbolift. "You really don't have to escort us, but you do have to tell us unless you want us wandering the upper pylons -- oh, damn," he abruptly shrank back against the rail with a groan as the lift engaged.

"What now?" Kira insisted.

"Nothing," Bashir sighed. "Only that Leeta was right. Rom is leaving again; he's leaving today."

"So?"

"I told her he wasn't?" he grimaced. "I don't suppose you could tell her I was wrong, could you? Quite innocently wrong, I mean?"

Kira regarded him skeptically.

"For the sake of the station?" Bashir proposed. "I'll show you my chest, if you insist -- I know that probably sounds a bit odd -- "

"No, I don't want to see your chest," Kira shook her head.

"You sure? It really is the only evidence I have on me -- "

"I don't want to see your chest!" she slapped his hand away from his jumpsuit. "What's the matter with your chest?"

"Big bruise," Bashir stepped out of the lift with a smile and a nod for her, Dax, and Worf. "Honest. Big one. Right here. Hurt like the devil, too -- Cardassian handcuffs? I guess it did."

"Well, fix it," Kira said as they strode off down the corridor for the shuttle bay. "There something wrong with you that you can't fix it?"

"No, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm just saying -- using it as an example, if you will…"

Or for some other reason. Or for simply conversation. It was one or the other. Dax smiled in agreement to herself, not really wanting to get into a pattern of thinking there was a hidden meaning or reasoning behind everything Julian said or did. "So there was something going on," she remarked amiably to Worf walking silently beside her.

His head jerked, her voice unexpected, an invisible question mark on his reply, an attempt to verify what she meant. "With Captain Sisko."

She looked into his eyes for the first time in days. He was depressed. That was a strain for a Klingon, a species who didn't handle emotion well if only because they handled it too much.She tried her smile again in a faint effort to make him feel better. 

"Oh, well, that's really no mystery…" Julian jealously, gregariously and jokingly popped his way into their conversation because for all the things that had changed over the past two weeks there were also the things that hadn't.

Dax just shook her head, hearing Worf's classic huff and facing Bashir's classic grin. "What's no mystery?

"Regarding Shakaar and Captain Sisko's idea of community service, you mean?"

"No…" Dax did not mean anything. Benjamin's concept of "sentencing" Shakaar to a period of community service was all Benjamin could do to make his point emphatically clear to Bajor's First Minister.

"No…" Bashir agreed. "You mean Jake and Nog."

"No…" Again Dax didn't mean anything. "Apparently you do," she smiled.

"They were arrested," Bashir explained on their way through the door into the shuttle bay, "during that brawl at Quark's."

"Benjamin informed me," Dax nodded.

"We do not believe it," Worf added.

"Who does?" Bashir shrugged as he stopped in surprise, probably more to do with the sheer size of the runabout really than anything else. "Apparently however believing and having to treat everyone fairly and equably are two different things -- it's big."

"It's very big," Dax agreed impressed.

"And brand new," Bashir said. "Not just merely clean -- come on." He set out to race her across the bay and check out their new home for a month anyway, screeching to a halt halfway through the midsection with a whooping, cheering, "Yes!"

"Two showers," Dax explained to Kira. "Julian's happy now."

He was ecstatic, but he kept it to himself as best he could. Though he did end up showing them all his chest, but only because the tour wouldn't have been complete unless he actually got to try out his new fully-equipped Infirmary and adjoining operating suite, not merely load something into the data banks.

"You're obsolete," he grinned up at Dax.

"I beg your pardon?" she said.

"Your immunity record," he straightened up. "Six months. Kira could stand a number of boosters as well."

"Uh, huh," Kira said.

"See for yourself. It's two years since you and Dukat ventured out for Korma."

"Why _does it seem like yesterday?" Dax agreed with Kira's scowl._

"Maybe because I'm still sick," Kira pushed Bashir aside. "Let me see that file."

"It's all right," Bashir said. "Not too much to do anyway except lounge around and wait for the Chief and Worf to complete assembly."

"Maybe you don't," Kira assured.

"As maybe you enjoy _lounging on the bathroom floor with your head hung over the toilet wishing it was a hallucination," Dax said. "Personally, if I'm going to have to suffer the consequences, I'd like to at least have had the fun."_

"No, my record is fine," Bashir laughed, "and I have plenty to do."

"Uh, huh," Kira jammed her finger in his ribs with a nod for the console. "Four years. The last time you had an immunization series Jaro was Minister."

"Now isn't that interesting," Dax smiled.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sisko's fingers drummed on Odo's desk. "Recommendation, Constable?"

Odo grunted. "You seem to have been doing fine on your own. You've got Shakaar agreeing to a six-week science expedition, and me considering a six-week sentencing to community service."

Sisko smiled. "Not to be misunderstood as an admission of guilt. A lesson perhaps, yes, in learning to exercise better judgment."

"Yes, well, community service isn't a sentence, so it sounds as if we may be even," Odo stared past Sisko to where the two teenage criminals sat in the outer lobby of his security office awaiting their fate. "How long have they been out there?"

Sisko didn't know. As long as he had been in here?

"We'll leave them there awhile longer," Odo decided. "Make sure that lesson of yours gets off to a good start. What other recommendation can I make -- oh, yes, Ortiz. 

  


You want an impartial opinion from a doctor on a doctor about another doctor. Interesting notion."

"I believe I'm less interested in finding someone to disagree with Doctor Bashir, Constable, than I am in insuring myself discharging, or not discharging a resident is the appropriate action."

"For the crime committed," Odo nodded. "Pardon the parallel, though it's one you might want to consider using. Pretend she's a cadet. Draw an association. Rude to an Ambassador, whatever. Then what would you do? Same rules, different game, that's all."

"Either or, Constable," Sisko assured. "Either or."

"Depends on how rude. In that case then my recommendation would be probably the best opinion you're going to get is Bashir's, whether or not it's impartial. Is he sure, or is he just angry? Want to give him time to think about it? How crucial is this? That's your first decision."

"Crucial?" Sisko thought. "As far as jeopardizing patient safety and security? Doctor Bashir is angry, rightfully so. Crucial as far as jeopardizing the flow of the Infirmary?" he looked at Odo. "That is also important, Constable. Intangible and invaluable."

"Don't overrule him then," Odo suggested. "Give the decision back to him. Tell him you're giving the decision back to him, now, or when he's cooled down, and that you trust him to make the right one; he will."

"Point…" Sisko nodded slowly. "Yes, that's a very good point…thank you."

"Anytime," Odo grunted. "Now, getting back to this idea of yours about community service…"

Sisko looked at him.

Odo rolled his eyes. "That's what I thought. All right. Community service it is. How long did you say they have been out there?"

"I don't know," Sisko said. "Thirty, forty minutes?"

"We'll let it go a few minutes more," Odo agreed. "Coffee?"

"Okay, so what are they doing in there?" Nog complained, burrowed down in his seat, his short, dangling legs and feet kicking against Jake's chair.

"Talking?"

"They've been talking an hour. We've been out here an hour." 

"Working out the details then," Jake shrugged. "I don't know. Relax. Everything's fine."

"Uh, huh. Where have I heard that before?" Nog scoured the lobby skeptically, waiting for you-know-who to show up there, if she had the nerve; she did. Nog glared, Ziyal laughed.

"Miss me?"

"Like my uncle Quark misses my mother," Nog assured.

"Nog, Ziyal didn't have anything to do with Quark's." Jake had a lot of faith in a dead dame he barely knew.

"No, she just happened to be there at the time my mother decided to take the place apart; I buy that. Makes sense to me."

"It's not a classic case of alien possession."

"Wait and see," Nog threatened. "I'm telling you, wait and see."

Jake nodded. "I think my father liked my idea better."

"Only," Nog advised Ziyal, "because he wouldn't let me tell him mine. He wouldn't let me explain you to him. I wonder why?"

"We're in enough trouble," Jake reminded. 

"Tell me about it," Nog said. "Look, one really simple question, all right? If her father sees her and he's crazy, and you and I see her, what does that make us?"

Jake sighed. "Must you always look on the dark side of things?"

"Must you always look on the bright? I'm telling you we have two choices here. That's it, two. We're lo-lo-lo-loco, or your pal Ziyal is an alien lifeform. Take your pick."

"What happened to dead?" Jake grinned at Ziyal.

Nog did not. "We should be so lucky -- hello! Will you just answer the question? Bottom line, just give us the bottom line. Are we, or are we not nuts?"

"Oh, well, I don't know," she shrugged. "Maybe?"

Nog snorted. "In your dreams. Your father was out in the Delta Quadrant long before you showed up, everyone knows that. So whatever your scheme is, I'm telling you for the last time it isn't going to work. Jake and I aren't even going to be here. We're scheduled for field assignment with Doctor Bashir, Commander Dax -- "

"And Keiko O'Brien." Ziyal nodded. "Dyaan IX. It's so pretty and peaceful there now that the mines are closed. That's really a lot of Anar's concerns. They don't want to lose the tranquility of their new life even if means sacrificing technical standards -- "

"What?" Jake said to Nog gawking at him.

"What do you mean what?" Nog sputtered. "_You were the one wandering around Bajor Prime for the last two months, not me. __You were the one hailing me __oh, hey, I'm back, wanna meet me on the Promenade?'"_

"So?"

"So you were the one who introduced me to her, okay?" Nog shrieked. "I didn't introduce you, you introduced me! That's so, okay? That's so -- _what?" He snarled at who turned out to be Captain Sisko, but only because such was his luck._

"Sir!" Nog jumped to his feet, snapping to attention with a respectful salute. "So what, Sir! How can I help you, Sir? Cadet Nog at your service!"

"Nog's annoyed because he thought he had a date set up for this weekend," Jake explained.

"That isn't entirely accurate, Sir," Nog refuted to Sisko.

"Yes, it is accurate," Jake nodded.

"No it isn't!" Nog turned on him. "What's accurate is every time she shows up something happens!"

"Coincidence," Jake shook his head.

"I'll give you coincidence!" Nog whirled back on Sisko and Ziyal's grinning leer teasing him over the Captain's shoulder; he blinked.

"Leeta," Jake offered his father.

"Major Kira!" Nog blurted out.

"What?" Jake groaned.

"I don't know!" Nog waved. "Association, all right? Association!"

Jake nodded. "Women in general," he advised his father. "Can we go now? Doctor Bashir needs us to stop by the Infirmary as soon as possible. Nog's immunizations are out-of-date."

"No, yours are out-of-date," Nog bustled along beside Jake's easy-going lanky gait as they set off down the Promenade. "I'm fine!"

"Well, what did he do?" Jake taunted. "Mix the two of us up?"

"How do I know? Anything's possible. If you don't know that by now!"

Sisko slowly turned away from watching them to ogle Odo in amazement.

Odo grunted. "Yes, well, if you missed it, so did I."

"Apparently," Sisko agreed.

"It's all right. Here comes one of the aforementioned troublemakers now," Odo gave a nod toward Leeta, a sight to see in her gilded lamé body hose and golden spikes hammering down on them as she matched wit for wit with Quark milking his knee for all it was worth. "Maybe she can shed a little light, figuratively, of course. Not too much there to shed otherwise."

"I'll ignore that, Constable," Sisko replied.

"You can try," Odo supposed. "What?" he drawled down on the less flamboyant of the two.

"Life," Quark assured. "I'm talking life. Hers, mine, I'm not picky. Just put her in, activate the security field and I'm on my way."

"Oh, shut up," Leeta clouted him in the back of his head. "Who cares what you want? It's always about what you want."

"See what I mean?" Quark said. "Little wonder why her husband's been subletting the Klingon's old quarters aboard the _Defiant."_

"Wrong," Leeta corrected. "Rom isn't aboard the _Defiant. Julian told me you and Garak are both crazy and I shouldn't pay attention to anything you say."_

"Doctors who turn down breakfast with smoldering blondes should be the last one to talk," Quark suggested. "Okay, I'll bite. What did Garak and I say? And keep it clean, the Captain's listening."

"Rom isn't aboard the _Defiant," she insisted. "He's not. He's nowhere near the __Defiant. He's…well, you know, someplace else."_

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Well, I guess that must have been my other brother Rom who ordered up a short stack of pancakes, twelve sausage links, six eggs over lightly and eight slices of toasts because you-know-who is too you-know-what about going you- know-where to eat."

"I guess so," Leeta nodded.

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "I don't have another brother Rom."

"I know that!" she snapped.

"Well then?" Quark waited.

"Well then!" she said stubbornly.

"You had your chance," Quark shrugged to Odo as Leeta took off down the Promenade with a wailing scream for Bashir. He hobbled away.

"The Chief," Odo identified Rom's breakfast date. "The 'smoldering blonde' is probably Ortiz." 

"Oh, yes, Constable," Sisko said. "One would presume."

"Which?" Odo asked interested.

"The Chief," Sisko assured. 

"Um, hm," Odo said. "Still, it lends credence to Bashir's story of unwanted attention."

"Unbelievable, but, apparently yes, Constable."

"Why is it unbelievable?"

"Because it is," Sisko smiled. "I'll be on Ops."

"Lucky you," Odo grunted.

"Definitely." Sisko beat it out of there before Garak woke up to find himself decked out in a violet waist-length wig and a pair of Cardassian handcuffs with no idea why, or how either; Odo did, but he wasn't talking.

"Hey," O'Brien greeted his wife of eight years, Keiko. He stood outside his quarters in the corridor for about ten minutes and then he just went for it; he walked in. In a way he was glad he did. She was a beautiful woman, shapely and feminine in her appearance, carriage, and height. She didn't tower over him and she wasn't down around his navel somewhere. She was normal size for a Human female, average, ageless to an extent, though an adult. In her thirties, middle ones, with the classic shaped dark eyes and straight dark hair of her Human culture Japanese.

They used to call it race, one of the handful or two of known species who did. Subcategorized, or subdivided themselves into defined _races rather than __houses or __families; they did that, too. They also once upon a time employed a caste system similar to Bajor's. They did a lot of things. Segmented, segregated, all long before O'Brien's time.Now the term race was generally synonymous or interchangeable with species. The categories broadened as "man's" world grew beyond a planet to a system, to a sector, to a quadrant, to a galaxy. Species, race, used to denote like people living on their individual worlds, whether or not their world incorporated different cultures, and whether or not the cultures got along. It hadn't changed much, the makeup of the level of existence or life commonly called humanoid. It hadn't changed at all. It wasn't any different as you moved from this world to that one. All alike, identical in their view and vision of "drawn lines". _

Drawn lines were on O'Brien's mind as he walked through the door into his home. Not racial ones, cultural, gender, or even marital. Distance, maybe? Time? He hadn't seen Keiko in a year since Dukat got it into his head to try and rule the galaxy one more time. Like it mattered. Before Cardassia's Dukat, it was Klingon Chancellor Gowron. Behind Gowron, as behind Dukat, was the Dominion. At the moment, a long moment, stretching on to be nine months, no one ruled. They were all back in their corners, behind their respective drawn lines.

It wasn't like the year fell away though. How could it?He couldn't even comprehend a year. Maybe he could if there was something dramatically different about her, which there wasn't. She looked like Keiko. Concentrating, intelligent, focused, distant. There was this incredible distance between them that had nothing to do with light-years and nothing to do with time. It had been there a while, and he didn't have any idea how to cross it.

The honeymoon was long over. Married in '67 aboard the _Enterprise, he just remembered being so very much in love. Molly was born in '68. In '69 they moved here when the station was nothing more than a hulking man-made pit in the skies above Bajor Prime. A hellhole. It had been a bad idea. It had been a good one. It had been an assignment, he had no choice. _

It was Heaven, it was Hell, and what it was most of all was never the same again. How could it be? Dimensionally the former Cardassian mining station _Terok Nor was a hundred, two hundred, three, five hundred times the size of the __Enterprise, somewhere around there. It was a city, or at least a town, inhabited by ghosts, voles, scattered, skeleton crews replacing the close-knit expansive community of the __Enterprise. It grew, it changed. It grew and changed so much that it was overwhelming to Worf when he arrived in '73. It made him nuts. He buried himself aboard the __Defiant for the first year to escape the hustle and bustle._

Keiko just left. The hustle was chaotic, the bustle could be violent as multitudes of species suddenly converged on the station, first to work, and then to live and then to visit and Keiko wanted out. She threatened and then she finally just did it. First emotionally and eventually physically. She gave up her school and returned to her first love of botany full time. Her days in the station's arboretum became field trips to Bajor Prime and then assignments and studies taking her away for months at a time beyond Bajor Prime to the outer colonies through the worm hole to the largely unexplored Gamma Quadrant.

Initially she brought Molly with her. Occasionally she left her at home aboard the station. And then redevelopment of the ravaged sectors of the Alpha Quadrant hit more than a snag in its rebirth. Conflicts returned, serious ones as the Cardassian Union slowly recouped and regrouped from its losses sustained during the Federation-Cardassian wars. The Klingon Empire took an interest. The Romulan. Six years ago when O'Brien first came to the station it was deep space, out in the middle of nowhere. No one had even heard of the place. Today it was next door to everybody and their brother. A metropolis of bedlam where everyone clamored to have their say and do it their way.

The wars returned. The isolated incidents of collision became battles, campaigns. Worlds were killing each other, annihilating each other, choosing sides and drawing lines. Keiko's infrequent trips to Earth to visit her family became more frequent, always taking Molly with her, and then suddenly she had two children when her son Kirayoshi was born, and almost as suddenly she was home on Earth with her children to stay.

She didn't come back because she missed him, loved him, and couldn't bear another moment away from him. She came back because her husband of eight years was facing charges of attempted murder and physical violative assault whose sordid details O'Brien really didn't want to have to get into because they really didn't have anything to do with him. A general "what happened?" he could and was prepared to answer, expecting to answer and really wanting to tell her.

Simply how. How to offer if she didn't ask. What to say if she said she didn't want to know, especially since it was over long before she even got to the station. What to say if she said she didn't want to listen when he told her he wanted to tell her anyway?

The "hey," was in replacement of "hi" or "hello" when he walked in. The simple word quiet, uncertain, awkward, chagrinned. She was in the living area of their quarters, standing over the couch, packing.Forty-seven mismatched outfits, hers, the kids, cast aside, she was replacing them with field gear. There a day she was leaving already. O'Brien made a mental note to try his best and not bring that up or into the conversation, not directly. No accusations, no demands. No "why" or "how could you" that she claimed not to understand and therefore couldn't answer what he didn't understand, and he didn't understand it. It plagued him, haunted him, confounded him, their marriage, everything, until they had nothing. She had his name and his two kids, and he had a wife and two kids off somewhere, and he loved her. He did. He loved her and his children, and he knew Keiko and his children loved him; they did. They just didn't connect. They weren't connected. They were separate and apart.

She looked up when he walked in to dally a few feet inside the doorway. She didn't say anything "Hi" "Hello" or "Hey" in return, not a word. She didn't look happy, angry, or sad. A totally, totally blank expression on her face and in her eyes. No hate, no love, madness, or even apathy.

Waiting, maybe, O'Brien decided that, for him to say something other than "Hey." So he did. He said neutrally, "Where are the kids?" as he took a few steps deeper into their quarters and closer to her across the room from him.

"Sleeping?" he guessed as she straightened up from organizing her duffels. "Kind of late isn't it?" he continued in comment only because it had to be somewhere around eight o'clock in the morning. "What time did you get in?"

"Yesterday," Keiko nodded and started walking toward the kitchen for some reason, her voice as neutral and unrevealing as his. "I don't know…six, seven o'clock?"

O'Brien followed her, feeling his head bobbing along in agreement. "Long trip. Especially for -- " he almost said Kirayoshi, the baby, but he didn't. The baby he held in his arms when Keiko left was a baby only because he was younger. Right now his son could race out and run right past him and he probably wouldn't even know it was his son unless someone told him.

Unless he looked like him -- did he? O'Brien stared at Keiko. He had no idea what his son looked like. Monitors, screens, letters, just didn't cut it. He knew what Molly looked like and would be surprised to see she was so much taller or surprised to see she wasn't. He knew what Keiko looked like and he could scarcely believe he was actually looking at her.

"Well, I guess for all of you," he finished, understanding Kirayoshi was the youngest. Molly, really, a baby still herself, and Keiko the one who had to manage the two of them from shuttle to transport to shuttle to transport and so on, halfway across the galaxy.

"Definitely," Keiko assured how it had been long, retrieving a cup of black tea from the replicator. It smelled like Lapsang suchong, it probably was. 

"You want something?" she asked, either catching him sniffing the air or simply being curious or courteous.

"No, that's all right," O'Brien declined. "Well, yeah, maybe," he changed his mind. "No, that's okay, I'll get it," he decided to get it himself, take care of himself, not put her out for no reason. That was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out what he wanted now that he said he wanted it.

He dawdled at the replicator. Happy to let him do his thing, Keiko sat down with a shrug at the breakfast bar, opening a package of small, fruit squares she had brought along on the trip for her and kids to nibble on. She nibbled on them now, taking a sip or two of her tea. He gave up and replicated a tall drink of ice water.

"Guess you want to know what happened," he went for it as his hand closed around the glass.

"Yes," Keiko said honestly, and that was a start. A big one. A good one.

O'Brien took a breath. "I put my foot in it," he admitted as honestly without self-pity or shame. "I was mouthing off. For all good reasons I felt at the time, which none of them were. Someone, they, the Threat Force, picked me up on it. Why not? I was right there. It wasn't why me? It was more, why not me -- do you want to take this somewhere more comfortable?" he interrupted himself to ask, realizing he was starting to talk quickly now that he was talking, and meaning someplace like the couch? 

"No," Keiko was comfortable. She had a chair to sit on. A table to lean on. A cup to grip and a cookie to eat.

"Okay, this is fine," O'Brien accepted and sat down on the chair across from hers, trying to drink and hold his water steady, the glass already sweating as much as his hand.

"How…" Keiko frowned, mentally shuffling through the random details she did have from Bashir's hastily scrambled transmission notifying her Miles was in hot water, as in boiling, up to his neck, and urging her back to the station. "Is she?" she asked, assuming that to be appropriate if there was an injured person other than O'Brien, and if not, she assumed he would correct any misinformation she had been given.

"Janice Lange," O'Brien put a name to the victim. "Doctor Lange. And she's fine, I guess. As fine as she can be. She was hurt. Seriously hurt. Injured."Maimed, he didn't say. Brain damaged. Dead.

Keiko nodded.

"It's a shame," O'Brien acknowledged. "Really. She's nothing but a kid. Cute one. Smart. Didn't have to happen, but it did." 

That was her classic argument. He realized when he said it. It didn't have to happen, but the fact was it did. That was the trouble she had with the station. What didn't have to happen did happen on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily basis, if you looked for it, and often enough when you didn't. It wasn't that way on Earth. Three hundred years ago it was that way and for the twenty-five thousand before. Then they got smart. They hadn't yet gotten smart out here. What did she expect him to say to her? Honey, you're living in the wild west. You're founding Rome. Landing on the moon, building the first shipyards on Mars. They were living on the brink of civilization. They were not yet civilized. She wanted civilized, and that was a problem, a big one, because civilized he couldn't offer her. Dreams, he could. Plans, admittedly some of them schemes. Trial and error. Blood, guts, gore, and mayhem. It all depended upon the way someone looked at it, and she apparently, obviously, looked at it one way, and he looked at it another.

He didn't look at it at all if she wanted him to be totally honest. She made him look at it. He just did what he was supposed to do, could do, and when he looked at what she wanted him to see, he was at a loss as far as what she wanted him to do about it, could do about it, which was nothing. What could he, Miles Edward O'Brien do to change the galaxy? Other than his little piece? Other than work with, assist, do his best, in a team effort to change the whole nine yards? He wasn't God. He wasn't some super-dynamic, extradimensional entity. He wasn't even Captain Kirk. He was Miles Edward O'Brien and he was starting to race off down this mental tangent that had absolutely nothing to do with anything. 

"_How did you become involved?" Keiko was seeking to verify._

Good question if she meant the whole business. "My mouth," he said again, if she meant the situation surrounding Lange.

She nodded. She meant Lange. His mouth, O'Brien wasn't quite sure she was sure what he meant. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat wondering if she wanted the details, if he should offer the details, which were what he said, not did, said. 

"I was crass," he extended. "Rude. Not to her, to Julian. I was competing with Julian. Against him." 

Her face contorted. He heard her sigh before she sighed, "Miles…" incredulous, baffled as to why he would ever compete against Julian? He didn't know. Maybe he liked to lose? He always lost. Everyone did. No one ever beat Julian Bashir at anything.Not since Bashir let the cat out of the bag about being genetically enhanced and how all those times everyone thought he'd lost and they had won were only because he let them win. It didn't matter what. Darts, spring ball, racket ball, _arm wrestling. O'Brien couldn't beat Bashir at arm wrestling. The scrawny little twit, half the Chief's size, O'Brien couldn't bring that arm down if he threw his weight against it because Bashir knew precisely how to hold his arm, exactly how to control his muscles. __Worf couldn't bring his arm down. Dax. They'd snap it off at his shoulder first, and since they knew they would, they didn't try. They didn't partake. _

Though Worf was probably tempted. Oh, yeah. It was getting around that time, getting close to that time again, when Worf would be tempted, as he had been tempted a few times before. A point that was neither here nor there at the moment, though it was relevant to a point O'Brien was hoping to make. In the meantime Keiko was saying her familiar "Miles, Julian is extremely concerned about you."

Which either meant she had assumed this, extracted it from his transmission, or Bashir had spoken to her since she had boarded the station. 

"I know that," O'Brien just agreed.

"He's a friend of yours," she insisted.

"I know that," O'Brien said. Kind of hard not to considering Bashir announced it two seconds after he set foot on the station for the first time. He sized up the crowd of two dozen, zeroed in on O'Brien, for God knew what reason, walked up and said "Hi." Or "Hello." Julian Bashir rarely, if ever, said, "Hi" to anyone. He certainly never said "Hey." He was refined, cultured, sophisticated. Civilized. He was also nuts. Out to lunch. Out in left field. Pushy. Arrogant. Obnoxious. Superior. He was okay, O'Brien supposed. He liked Bashir. It took him _years to like him, but eventually he liked him. He still liked him._

He had actually spent the last week even if he didn't spend the first, understanding Bashir's response, opinion, feelings, surrounding the whole situation that had happened. He spent the last week understanding Odo's, Kira's. They were right. They were absolutely right. The Chief was dead wrong.

"Honey…honey…" O'Brien interrupted Keiko's dissertation on Bashir's deep feelings for him that wasn't really a dissertation, maybe a sentence or two. "I know he's my friend, okay? He is my friend and he's right. He's dead right on anything he said. I let him down. I let everyone down. They didn't know what to think. That's it in a nutshell. No one knew what to think. I wasn't me. I wasn't acting like me. And if I wasn't acting like me over here, where then was the line drawn? When did I start acting like me? Where? When did I take it further? How much further? Where?"

She was watching his hand section out his words, his sentences, the here, the there, like a chop, chopping down on the table top. Not hard. Just chop-chop-chop, sectioning everything out.

"Were you drinking?" she asked. She surprised him unless she was just looking for a way to explain it to herself other than he felt like mouthing off because he didn't drink. He drank like most people drank, when he felt like it. Other than that he didn't drink, no more or less than anyone else.

"Yes," he said. "I had a couple of beers. But, no, I wasn't drunk -- I ended up being drunk," he assured. "I ended up unconscious. Intoxicated. Blown. But that was induced -- and," he nodded, "that was actually one of the things that even had the doubters a little confused. Too much too quick too soon. You know what I mean? I would have had to have been sitting there with a hypospray, drowning myself in the stuff."

"But why?" she said.

"Simple," he assured, "in retrospect. Scary as hell. They didn't care. It didn't matter if it looked real, contrived, or what it looked. That wasn't the point. I wasn't the point. Even she wasn't the point. The point was they wanted the conference canceled. And this -- her, me, _Dukat, Quark's, whoever, wherever. This is what we're going to do unless you cancel, until you cancel, whatever the hell we feel like doing. They're deranged, honey. Sick and dangerous as they come."_

And now that he had talked her into leaving with the two kids faster than she had arrived: "We've got to work on why, honey," he said soberly. "The us part of why. I was so angry. I have been so angry, and that's not an excuse, but it is the truth. We are so far apart -- I'm not talking about Earth," he assured before the argument started. "I'm talking about us. The entity, unit, us. I'm not asking you to meet me halfway because you can't, and I can't meet you. I'm asking you to step into the same area as me and for the two of us to turn around and look at each other. It's what we need to do. What we have to do. What we're supposed to do. Not live in each other's shadow, and not you go your way while I go mine. And I guess I'm asking," he said, "is it something you want to do?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation.

His life flashed before his eyes. It really did. He didn't know what to say for a moment. Not because he expected her to say "No. I want a divorce" because he didn't. He didn't expect her to burst into tears; she didn't. She just sat there and said "Yes" like it was an easy question. The simplest one in the world to answer.

"Okay," he patted her hand he didn't even realize he was touching. "That's fine -- I mean, that's great," he sat back on his seat and picked up his glass of water that was still cool. "Definitely what I wanted to hear, that's for sure."

Keiko shrugged, remarking, "You're so emotional, Miles."

He was. That he was. Or he could be. Rough, tough, gruff, emotional. Explained why when Bashir extended his lily-white hand in friendship Keiko grabbed it and crammed it into his. Nagging him to death until he took it, accepted it, became friends with it, Bashir.

"You're not?" he smiled.

"No…" She felt she was emotional about important things.

"You're important to me," O'Brien said. "Let me tell you something…" he inclined forward in confidence. 

"Miles…" she interpreted the move differently and wasn't having any of it.

"It's okay," he said. "I'm not going to get gooey -- or sexual. I understand." Which he did. He understood she just got in, home. That if she was going to come home she'd rather it not have been because her husband was under arrest. He understood all of that. How even if she wasn't angry, she was probably annoyed.

"Did you…" he digressed for a moment back to the question he hadn't asked. "I don't know. Did you ever think, maybe not believe, but did you ever think there may have been something to this? What happened?"

"No," she said as quickly as she had said yes before.

"Never in a million years, Miles Edward O'Brien," he added, if he correctly read what she didn't say.

"That's about right," she agreed.

He nodded because what was also probably right was never in a million years would she have, or should she have had to think about it. Know about it. Come to terms or deal with it. One of those things that should not have happened and did. "Thanks," he nodded. "Seriously. I appreciate that. Though if -- heck," he chuckled suddenly. "Though if you listen to Julian I have this wild man inside of me. This _Mister Hyde dying, even if he isn't trying, to come out."_

"Everyone does," she shrugged.

"Humans," O'Brien agreed. "Yeah, that's probably true. Definitely a few cultures out there who do, more than a few. On the outside, not the in. Did I tell you she was married to Dukat? Not Dukat, his son. Did I tell you that?"

"No. I heard that though, yes."

"Oh, yeah? Where? From Julian?"

"No," Keiko said. "On the shuttle."

She didn't say which one. It didn't matter. First, second, third, fourth, or last, good news like that traveled far and fast.

"I'm being facetious," he said when she looked at him.

She knew that. Though really she couldn't see where it was anything but news. Neither good nor bad. "Which one?" she asked.

"Which son? I don't know. The oldest one. Anon's his name. Why?"

"Just curious."

"Name to the face, to the --well, story, actually," O'Brien nodded.

"Yes," Keiko said.

"Who even knew he had a son old enough," O'Brien agreed. "Though it stands to reason he does. Heck. He's got what? Six of them? Seven? Eight?"

"Miles…" Keiko sighed.

"You don't want to talk about it," he said.

"No, not really." 

Neither did he. To put it bluntly, who the hell cared?"Let me tell you what's going on with Worf and Dax," he ventured back to where he had left off before she started getting nervous that he was going to molest her ten minutes after he came in the door.

"Worf and Dax?" she said.

"Worf and Dax," he assured. "There's a point to all of this, so let me finish."

  



	7. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Keiko didn't get the point. She got it, but she didn't get it even though had she gotten it she would have been the one who came out on top. The one who was right in the eternal battle of the sexes that O'Brien couldn't win even when he willingly lost, and he couldn't believe it. He sat in the _Defiant's commissary with his hands folded in front of him trying to figure it out.His hurry-up bite of dinner before beginning the countdown to getting out of there growing cold in front of him. _

"Commander Dax's immunization requirements are current to the evacuation from the station at the time of Gul Dukat's attack." Worf's large, weighty frame slouched next to him, his mood and face displaying his deep feelings of dissatisfaction with life at large. 

O'Brien looked at him. "What'd he do? Hit her with a booster on the way through the airlock? What are you talking about? Come off it. She's going to the outer colonies, 

  


her immunization record is six months too old. Half of us are out-of-date. Kira. Nog. _Rom," he indicated Rom sitting to his left at the table, across from Worf._

"Um, yup," Rom nodded, "six months."

"And he's not even going," O'Brien assured. "He's just coming in contact. But, hey, sorry. Those are the rules."

"Yup," Rom nodded. "That's the rules."

Worf huffed. "Commander Dax and Major Kira have just returned from the Bajoran outer colonies."

"It wasn't planned!" O'Brien insisted. "Look," his hand clamped down on Worf's arm. "I told you. Face facts. There's nothing esoteric about it."

"Nope," Rom shook his head. "Isn't. Told Leeta the same thing. But…um, she doesn't want to listen. Just doesn't."

"Do they ever?" O'Brien agreed. "I'm talking for forty minutes. I'm telling Keiko I can see where she's been right, and I've been wrong. I realize, wait a minute, this is the same thing. It's identical to what's been going on between her and me. How come I can see this when it's Worf, but I can't see it when it's sitting in front of my own face? In my own damn home? When it's my wife?"

"Um…" Rom's face puckered in an innocent frown. "I don't know. Why can't you?"

"Because I can't," O'Brien scoffed. "I can't, but now I can, and the honeymoon is over. Try explaining that to a Klingon; you can't."

"Nope," Rom shook his head in agreement, "not possible."

"But short and sweet that's exactly what it is," O'Brien assured. "The honeymoon is over. It's changed, different -- and it's supposed to be. "That's the deal. It's _supposed to be. Growth, change, moving on, the whole nine yards. You're supposed to get bigger, better."_

Worf huffed. "I am content."

"Which is the problem," O'Brien's hand caught Rom's shoulder in encouragement. "Tell him. Marriage isn't a dead end, it's a new beginning. That is the way it is. I can see this. I _know exactly what he's doing and where he's going wrong. But can I see this with myself? No. That's my point. Because I should be able to. If I can see it with Worf, I should be able to see it with me. Right or wrong?"_

"Um…" Rom blinked at Worf."I don't know. What are you doing?" 

"He doesn't know," O'Brien waved. "No more than I know. He's doing what I do; making it worse. What should have been over in two hours is going on two weeks."

Worf huffed. "I am not in favor of discussing this."

"He's married," O'Brien insisted. "You think Leeta's never walked off in the year they've been married?"

"Yup," Rom assured. "Today. Walked off today. This…um…this afternoon I think it was. Lunch. Said 'I'm going'. Yes, that's what she said. You and Julian are jerks and I'm going."

"Exactly," O'Brien nodded. "That's exactly what happened. Dax got mad and walked out. So, what do I do? I mean when Keiko walks out?"

"Um…" Rom said. "I don't know. What do you do?"

"Maybe not _out," O'Brien agreed, "but away. I tried to explain __that to him. She didn't walk __out, she walked away. The only reason she walked __out was because you were aboard the __Defiant and she didn't have enough room to walk away. Were you on the station she would have walked off into the bedroom, into the kitchen -- "_

"Nope," Rom shook his head. "Out. Walked out. _Bam. Out the door."_

"Whatever," O'Brien said. "Out, off, away; she walked. That's what she did, she walked. So, what do I do?"

"Um…" Rom said. "I don't know. What do you do?"

"I follow her. 'Is it over yet?' That's what I do. I want it to be over so bad I make it worse. I hound her. If I don't follow her, I definitely hound her. I ask. I pout. I whine. I huff, I puff -- I mean, put Worf in there, not me. But I think you know what I mean."

"Yup," Rom said. "Know exactly what you mean and, nope. Can't do that with Leeta. Nope, can't. Leeta will hit you."

"Can't do it with any of them," O'Brien assured. "It's not the way to handle it. Am I making sense?" he asked Worf studying Rom.

"Why are you and Doctor Bashir jerks?" Worf insisted.

That was a good question maybe. O'Brien's head turned back to Rom.

"Um…" Rom said. "Because I said I'm going and Doctor Bashir said I'm not and I said I am and Doctor Bashir said, okay, Rom is."

"Huh?" O'Brien said after some extensive thought.

"It is irrelevant," Worf replied.

"No, it isn't," O'Brien groaned. "You asked, so don't give me this irrelevant crap because I know why you asked, and you're dead wrong. The door's open, Julian walks in. He walks in when it's closed. For crying out loud it was flung wide for four years and he ignored it."

Worf stared at him.

"The door," O'Brien assured. "I'm speaking metaphorically over here and you know what I'm saying. It should have lasted two hours, it's lasted two weeks. Want it to last three more? No? Then knock it off. You're making her angry. Look at her face. You're getting on her nerves. Forget this crap about Julian because with _that you're getting on mine, yeah, you are. He's a friend of mine. You're a friend of mine. I'm being stuck in the middle between two friends, and, no, I do not like it, and you are not telling me -- __not telling me Dax doesn't like it any less. Okay? That's what I'm saying to you. You want the plain truth? That's the plain truth._

"And yeah," he said, "maybe that's a little different than what's been going on between Keiko and I, but it's the same thing. In principle it's the same. You're telling her to choose. You're telling her she has to choose, and she doesn't want to. That's in your head, that's your rule, it's not hers."

Worf huffed. "I am not telling Commander Dax she and Doctor Bashir cannot be friends."

"No," O'Brien agreed. "You're annoyed that she's back five minutes and gone for the next six weeks. Hallo! This is news? It's not. _That's what you're annoyed about. __That's what I'm annoyed about.So stop blaming __Julian, who's got nothing to do with anything other than he's there. Under orders, like her. Doing his __job, like her. Kira, and, yeah, Keiko. Face it. Accept it. __Deal with it. You want to complain to someone, complain to Captain Sisko because this was all his idea. __Not Dax's. Not mine, yours, Kira's, Keiko's, or __Julian's. It was Captain Sisko's. Tell him he's ruining your marriage. Let me know how you make out._

"Okay?" he patted Worf's arm. "Let me know. He'll tell you what I'm telling you. What are you, nuts?"

Worf's inspecting eyes shifted back to Rom.

"In English this time," O'Brien supported. "What's the deal with you and Leeta?"

"Um…" Rom said. "Just that. Yup, just that. Told Leeta the same thing. I'm under orders. I'm doing my job, and I'm going.

"Yup," he nodded. "I'm going. Doesn't matter what Doctor Bashir says, he's wrong. I'm going…and…I'll be back.I'll see you when I get back…and…um…if you're mad, I guess you're mad. Doesn't change anything. Nope. Doesn't. That is the way it is…and I'm right," he grinned. "Doctor Bashir told Leeta he was wrong and so she's mad at him now, too. But that's okay. She won't be mad at him and she won't be mad at me. She'll deal with it."

"You're sitting at the wrong table," O'Brien turned away from him.

"Um…" Rom looked around confused because the commissary was empty except for them. Captain Sisko as emphatic this field expedition to Anar's colony maintain the same high level of security as the first.

"Look," O'Brien tried one last time with Worf, who he knew, yeah, he did. Had known for as long as he had known Keiko, from the _Enterprise, and Worf did huff, he puffed, he sighed. He had a very large presence, a very heavy presence. But he was a very large, a very heavy male. A Klingon. Smoothed, softened, sculpted by his Human upbringing and environment. Silent, watchful, quiet, he was still Klingon. Employing Vulcan-like techniques of control and temperance to tame, train the wild beast living, breathing, thrashing, inside of him._

"Fact of life," O'Brien said, "we are all Cro-Magnon men regardless of the species. We're Neanderthals. Prehistoric. We want what we want, above all only the way we want it…Except for maybe Julian," he admitted while Worf sat there contemplating the theory. "Julian wants it, but he's different. He's…I don't know. A vapor or something. A wood nymph."

"Irrelevant," Worf reminded.

O'Brien looked at him. "I'm making a point here. The only man I have ever known to successfully combine the two _aspects, if you want to call them that, is Captain Sisko. _

"Honest," he got up to get himself a cup of coffee from the replicator. "Not even Captain Picard -- he was an intellectual, don't get me wrong. He was very much an intellectual. But Captain Sisko has this incredible _esthetic quality to him, I guess you could call it, on top of everything else. It's unmistakable. It's obvious; he cooks! He doesn't just cook, he __cooks. Take a look at his kitchen -- take a look at his quarters. What do you see? Same thing when you look at him. Style, strength, intelligence, class, and he's not afraid of being or having any of it. He's a captain. He's a soldier. He's a father. He's a man._

"That's a heck of a package," O'Brien shook his head. "_That," he said, "is genetically advanced. Don't give me any of this enhancement nonsense. Captain Sisko's not enhanced, he's advanced."_

He stood there thinking about that for a while. Feeling Worf's pain and concern over coming up short in the eyes of the woman he loved. To where Bashir did what? Come closer? He took his coffee, moving back to his seat at the silent table. "What's so cute about Julian Bashir?" he eventually asked.

"Um…" Rom said when Worf didn't say anything.

"I mean other than he's cute," O'Brien dismissed. "Because he is cute; physically attractive. But what's so interesting about him? What is it about him? What attracts the lot of them to him like flies?"

Worf sighed. "You are exaggerating."

"No I'm not," O'Brien assured. "You are. You're insisting there's something special about Dax and I'm telling you there's not. She's one of a million -- probably more -- so what about it?" he clouted Rom gently. "Come on. You're the man with all the answers. What about it? Why does Leeta like Julian? Why is she friends with him?"

"Um…" Rom concentrated hard on the question. "I don't know. Because he's interested maybe?"

"Huh?" O'Brien said. "Interested in what?"

"That," Rom nodded. "Just that. He's interested."

O'Brien pondered that, throwing it aside with a scoff. "No, he's not interested. He's a con man. He's not interested in crap. _I'm more interested and I'm not interested in half this garbage and neither's Worf."_

"Yup," Rom nodded. "But Doctor Bashir acts it."

"Right," O'Brien said. "He acts it. Looks it. Sounds it. _Talks. In the meantime he's not and they have to realize that -- they have to," he advised Worf. "They have any brains at all, they have to. What are you saying? Dax doesn't have any brains? No? Well then she has to."_

"Yup," Rom nodded. "Does."

"He's escapism," O'Brien told Worf. "Okay? That's what he is. You're being a pest, he's goofy entertainment. Which would you rather be around? I'm telling you I can see this so clearly -- I just can't seem to see it to save my own damn life when it's me!' he grit his teeth and slammed himself in the head with the heel of his hand. 

"Who can?" Rom agreed.

"Huh?" O'Brien said.

"Who can?" Rom picked up his fork, digging down into his dinner. "No one. Nope, no one. That's just the way it is." 

"I can't stand you," O'Brien stared at him.

"Um…" Rom said.

"I'm serious," O'Brien scooped up Rom's plate, took him up by the arm and plunked both of them down at an adjacent table. "Sit over there, all right? Just sit over here."

"Um…" Rom said. "Okay," he shrugged. "But it's just grubs, you know. Yup. Just grubs and beans."

"Where was I?" O'Brien sat back down next to Worf with a sigh. "I don't know. It stinks, you're right. Here ten minutes, gone a year, and damn you if you dare say anything about it. Just damn you," he picked up his coffee with a shake of his head.

"Six weeks," Worf said dully.

"Right," O'Brien sneered. "This time. Give it time. 'You need to start a club.' I'm serious. That's what Keiko said. 'You need to start a club.' Forty minutes I'm enlightening her to how I've been enlightened and that's all she said. 'It sounds to me like the two of you need to start a club.'" 

Worf looked at him.

"Me and you," O'Brien nodded. "I'm telling you she missed the whole point."

"What is the point?" Worf inquired.

"We're twins," O'Brien assured. "Me and you. Twins. So see? I'm wrong even when I'm right."

Worf nodded. "I believe I may understand."

"Good," O'Brien said. "Because I sure as hell don't.I'm just trying. That's all I can do is try." He regarded Rom jealously. "What's his secret?"

"Ferengi females do not wear clothes," Worf reminded him the Ferengi Alliance was a patriarchal society to the extreme that it was sexist. The female a subordinate totally subjugated by the male. That was not the same with the Klingon Empire where the female was much more equal, or Terran society where the female was completely equal. It wasn't a keen sense of uncommon insight Worf attributed to Rom, it was his culture; the Ferengi could not think anything else.

"Point," O'Brien conceded. "Sort of. So he's the boss. So he's a born natural to be the boss. Doesn't mean his wife agrees with him."

"She does not agree," Worf replied.

"No," O'Brien snorted, "she agrees with us._ Ours agree with him. __We may as well be the ones not wearing clothes because we're not. We just think we are. It's a screwy universe. I'm telling you, a screwy universe."_

"That is accurate," Worf picked up his prune juice with a sigh. 

"Is it working?" Bashir grinned at Dax clutching the edge of what he called an examination bed and personally felt much more like a tilt-table no matter how hard she tried to sit straight.

"Oh, it's working," she assured, her feet cold and her head numb and spinning interesting colors.

He laughed. "I meant the suppressant, but that's all right. Honestly, you'll be fine in a moment."

"Uh, huh," Kira staggered back in from the toilet to flop over the examining bed next to Dax and snatch his hypospray away from him. "We'll see. Lay down. Let's see how you like it."

"Later perhaps," Bashir took his hypospray back with a wink. "Right now I have a date with a number of eukaryotic organisms once I'm finished with you two -- ready?" he asked Dax.

She stared at Lange's putrid collection of samples lined up within sight. "Maybe in a minute," she slipped down off the examining bed to move carefully for the door.

Bashir shrugged. "All right. Though I insist your responses are largely psychological -- the two of you." He capriciously dangled the hypospray in front of Kira. "Are you ready?"

"I hate you," she assured. "I mean, I really hate you."

"Nonsense," Bashir disputed with a laugh. "What you hate is having to see a doctor; who doesn't? It's a universal repulsion."

"Explains the four years," Kira grimaced under the tickle of the hypospray against her neck.

"Now that's very clearly some sort of file or system error," Bashir maintained. "My inoculation record is as current as Dax's, at the very least yours. As a matter of fact I remember quite clearly…"

"Feeling better?" Michelle stopped by about five hours later to sympathetically inquire as he lay face down on his desk, feverish, perspiring, exhausted and hoarse from attempting to hack up his large intestine and just get it over with.

"God, no," Bashir wheezed. "The only saving grace is I'm not sure I could possibly feel any worse. They can't be ready to disembark yet. Please tell me you're a hallucination."

"They're ready," Michelle apologized while callously stuffing his attaché in his hand.

"No, I can't…" Bashir slumped for the door to turn back and fall down on his couch. "I'm sorry, but I just can't. Hail Dax and tell her I'm in surgery…intensive care…" he closed his eyes against the body mass attempting to sit him up. "The morgue…"

Dax found him sprawled in the middle of the airlock, incapable and stubbornly refusing to try taking another step.

"What are you doing?" she stood over him with her hands on her hips.

"Dying," Bashir assured. "Don't even try to talk me out of it."

"Come on," she hoisted him and his duffels to his feet, tossing one or the other of them over her shoulder; it felt like it was him. Miraculously however he had a momentary recovery as the door to the turbolift closed and he seized her in a kiss until the vertigo returned to overtake him and he fell into the wall listening to her laugh "Halt program."

"I've been good," he claimed as she wiped his hair off his forehead and he fought back the acidic nausea threatening him.

"You've been very good," she agreed.

"I haven't said a word," he said, wanting to say several and managing an incredulous, excited, "Six weeks. I can't believe it, six weeks. Six glorious and incredible weeks." She danced in front of his eyes.

"Six weeks," Dax smiled.

"Hm," his arms curved around her like she was a comforting body pillow, his head snuggled against her shoulder, tasting the fragrance of her throat and ear. 

She laughed again. "Are you sure you're sick?"

"Dreadfully. You?"

"Well…" she said. "Getting there I suppose. I can tell you, the one for Rudellian plague is one of the worst."

"If not largely responsible for the frontal lobe epilepsy," Bashir resisted the urge to nod which would not have been too clever."That figures, it is Cardassian spawned."

"But even that eventually begins to get better," she promised.

"After it first gets much, much worse," Bashir sighed. "Marvelous. Judging from you I should expect to be able to stand on my own somewhere around midnight. So much for our dinner plans, not that a night's sleep isn't a novel idea, simply not what I had in mind." His heady whisper kissed her ear.

"Oh?" she said as if she didn't know. "What did you have in mind?"

"Yes, well, I think you know the answer to that by now. It's all right though. I'll be good; cross my heart. 'Dax, who?' How's that? Can't be anymore unmoved or distant than that I would think."

"Yes, well, I'm not sure I want you to be that removed."

"Good." He took a chance at kissing her full on the mouth again while the turbolift spun around them.

"Are you all right?" He heard her ask as he hung onto her desperately trying not to gag.

"Lurid," he confessed. "Incredibly."

"What?" she laughed.

"The thought, feeling, sensation. I never realized how alike sex and being on the brink of death were -- my God, I think I'm delirious."

"Soon," her hand stroked his back consolingly.

"Followed by a series of spastic convulsions," he guessed.

"Similar," she teased.

"All right, they're identical," he agreed and her hand sharply cracked his hip in scolding. "Ow. Stop that. I told you it was lurid. Not my fault. The Maquis infiltrated my medical banks, maliciously replacing my inoculation records with one of their own."

"I don't think so."

"All right, it was Gul Dukat then."

"Try again," she nodded.

"Well, you certainly aren't suggesting it was Captain Sisko, are you?" he grinned. "Dare I reveal the last time he voluntarily submitted to an immunization series?"

"Hm…" Dax said. "Four years? Like you?"

"Never," Bashir kissed her. "Just like the rest of us -- make it good; has to last."

"What does?"

"The kiss. Not a day, more like three."

"Or two," she calculated.

"With a little luck. Still, that fairly kills the idea of a good night's rest as well -- ow!" he laughed as her hand cracked against his hip again. "Will you stop that? I told you it's not my fault."

"No, it's mine."

"Definitely," he assured.

It was an impending two and a half days, fifty-six hours. The _Defiant scheduled to transport them roughly midway in distance to Dyaan IX. Time, the runabout __Styx would take almost another four days to reach the colony due to its maximum sustainable warp speed of 2.5 for 38 hours. She was new, bright, fast, but she was still only a runabout, heavy under her science module, and armed. _

Dax deposited Bashir's duffels on the bridge of the _Defiant, aiming him toward a chair. He sank into it, his head lolling back to look up into Kira's face looming down on him like one giant peakish brown eye winking and blinking at him from under a bristling dark red brow. "Don't even think about it," he warned her._

"What?" she said.

"Vomiting on my head. I know you want to get even. You have that look in your eye; the middle one."

"TCH!" She slapped her lips together in this thoroughly disgusting sound, sending him whirling and his stomach into a near-fatal tailspin as she pushed herself off from the back of his seat.

"Doctor?" Sisko said as Bashir's chair ground to a swaying halt with him facing the navigation console rather than the farewell assembly Sisko had called to wish them all good luck.

"Yes, I heard you," Bashir assured while Jake helped him figure out what was wrong, assisting him in carefully turning his chair back around forward. "You were saying something about arms. Weapons, I presume you to mean -- not appendages," his hand raised weakly. "One small question however, please."

"All weapons will be disabled by Major Kira prior to entering the planet's orbit," Sisko assured. "They are a precaution only, Doctor."

"Yes," Bashir said, "similar to the immunization boosters -- may I be excused? Please? I really think I'm about to die."

"Jake," Sisko's head flicked for his son to help as Bashir rose gingerly to his feet.

"Quite all right," Bashir declined, "I'm not strong enough to go too far…"

"Made it to the toilet, Doc," Jake's voice penetrated Bashir's daze, "that's all that counts."

"Is that where we are?" Bashir patted the cool, aluminum seat under his head. 

"Been," Jake assured. "Sorry to bother you but I was beginning to worry you may have passed out on me."

"Brief coma," Bashir straightened up, thought the better of it and rolled over to stare at the ceiling, "nothing to be concerned about. Absurd really, I maintain, because much of this is a psychological response."

"Umm…" Jake said doubtfully, "I don't know about that. From what I remember from my last booster, and the way you look, it's pretty physiological."

"How vulgar of you to even suggest that," Bashir closed his eyes. "My God, I can't believe how awful I feel. There's no way anyone could survive twenty-four hours of this, I know I can't."

"You'll feel better," Jake promised, giving him a hand up. 

"When?" Bashir insisted. "Compared to? Whom? Major Kira and Commander Dax? Major Kira has two livers and Dax enjoys gagh as if it were caviar -- My God," he shrank back from the approaching turbolift. "It makes me gag to even think about it."

"Nog was worse," Jake nodded. "He's still feeling pretty bad and it's been what? Nine, ten hours for him."

"With those Ferengi lobes of his?" Bashir said. "I guess so. The symptoms of vertigo must have been magnified a hundred fold; Rom also."

"No, actually Rom went down and stayed down for maybe three hours and after that he was fine. I guess it varies with the person-- you should know that," he grinned.

"Why? Because I'm the Chief Medical Officer? For all that's worth. I'm still sick."

Jake laughed. "I'm not so sure being the Chief Medical Officer counts."

"The devil it doesn't," Bashir assured. "As sick as I am, all of you can be, once a month if I maliciously misplace your inoculation records the way someone maliciously misplaced mine…Once a week…" He started for the turbolift to stop. "No, I can't do it. I can't go in there. All this whirling and churning and spinning, it wouldn't be half as bad if we didn't insist on getting everywhere at some fantastic speed. I'll stay here. I'll sleep here…"

"My God, yes," Bashir stretched out prone on his deliciously comfortable bunk while Jake quietly set his duffels aside.

"Think you can take it from here, Doc?" Jake leaned over to verify. "You're down the end of the corridor, right next to the toilet."

"No," Bashir mumbled, "but I can't see where I have any choice."

He fell fitfully asleep, his mind contorting and distorting the day into a series of hallucinatory images, vaguely recalling waking up somewhere around 2300 to determine his position and locate the shower. He was much better after that, fading into a restful state upon returning to his cabin, dreaming of Dax rather than Jake leaning over him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

"Questions?" Sisko resumed asking the floor trying not to laugh after Bashir's undignified exit. "Commander?"

"No…I don't believe so…" Dax shook her head at Kira. "Any communication I would presume to be restricted to the _Defiant or the station?"_

"Absolutely," Sisko agreed. "Priority One only. It's a science expedition, however it is still special operations.Major? Or Mrs. O'Brien?" He gave a nod to Keiko not to exclude her.

"No questions," they said.

"Excellent," Sisko smiled. "In closing then, I'm sure the crew and officers aboard the station, as well as those here aboard the _Defiant, join me in wishing the best of luck to _

  


Major Kira and all members of the science team; Doctor Bashir in particular, at the moment," he joked.

"Definitely," Dax laughed above the Chief's boisterous "Here, here" and the group's short round of self-congratulatory applause.

"Seriously, honey," O'Brien's grin beamed from ear to ear for Keiko standing offside of his console, "congratulations. There's a heck of an opportunity here, he's right about that."

He had just decided this. Within the last hour it had suddenly clicked, as it had clicked earlier about Worf and him being twins, they were talking about science. The focus was science. It was just what the Doctor of Marriage ordered. 

"It's interesting." Keiko reserved celebrating, but she was impressed by much of what she had heard during her lengthy briefing by Kira and Captain Sisko, and for a short while with Bashir and Dax.

"Oh, yeah," O'Brien supported. "I mean, I wasn't there for much of it." He didn't have to be. He had all the background on the Anar part of the equation.

"But, wow," he shook his head, "I didn't know about all this other stuff myself… the mummy and everything. It's interesting. It's definitely interesting. It suddenly started all making sense to me what Captain Sisko's trying to do here."

He was starting to breathe a little faster, beginning to sound a little overly anxious, wanting to ensure she knew she had his support. It was also good that he recognized this almost immediately, before she did. Maybe. He still recognized it, shifting his focus. "Are you sure you don't have any questions?" he checked. "Now's the time to ask -- Captain Sisko anyway. Kira will be here."

"No," Keiko said.

"Okay," O'Brien accepted. "Okay." Wracking his brains to think of something else to say; he didn't have to think too long or too hard. "Kids' get off okay? Settled?" It was a little obvious, as its answer was a little obvious; their mother was here. He was here. Where did he think his kids were? Alone? On their own?

"Leeta's there," Keiko replied.

"Leeta," O'Brien stated.

"Miles…" she sighed.

"No…no…" O'Brien said quickly.

"They'll be fine," Keiko assured.

"They will be," O'Brien agreed. "Absolutely. I have no problem with Leeta or anyone else." Which wasn't exactly true. Leeta not exactly on his list of top ten. _Odo probably a step or two higher. __Kassidy Yates second only to Jake's place as Number One. He didn't know why she didn't ask Kassidy._

"Jake's here," he agreed with Keiko. "I mean, what are you going to do? Jake's here. I just didn't realize Leeta was coming to our place rather than the kids going to her.

"But that's fine," he assured. "That's even better. That's…" he paused as something else suddenly clicked in his mind. "She lied."

"What?" Keiko said.

"Nothing," O'Brien waved. "Nothing. I guess Rom just didn't understand her -- what time did she show up?" he checked. "_Noon?"_

"I guess," Keiko shrugged. "Lunchtime."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said.

"Miles…" she groaned again.

"No, I was just wondering," he claimed. "I was just wondering -- I mean -- " he told her as tactfully as he could, "I don't want to have a Bajoran houseguest when I come home. Okay? That's what I'm saying. Not that she wouldn't come in handy with taking care of the kids and things, but she's got a job. She's got a life. I don't want to get in the middle of it. Not between her and Rom. And _not between her and Quark -- which, I don't know how you managed to get him to give her a week off, but you did. You did."_

Which, now that he stood there saying that he knew how she did. "You paid him. You paid Quark. Aw, jeez!" he threw up his hands, quietly, but they were up in the air, and sooner or later everyone there would start looking like they always looked; he lowered them, taking a breath.

"What are you doing paying Quark?" he just wanted to know. "What is he doing? Renting her out? She's the one doing the work. You pay her, not him. Not her and him. Just her. Got it? Her."

He sealed it, ended it, with a nod and an emphatic smack of his hand down on the console. "Okay," he said, satisfied it was settled. "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. You just go on your assignment and I'll take care of Quark when I get back…and, um…" he said, his brain working overtime again on what to do, what to say, where to go next. "What are you doing? Did you eat? Dinner? I started to but had to get cracking on finishing the analyses so we can get out of here. Want to meet in the commissary? Say twenty minutes?"

"That'll be fine," Keiko replied.

"Great," O'Brien exhaled. "Okay, that's great. You go ahead, unpack, get settled, whatever you have to do, and I'll meet you; I'll be there; twenty minutes."

"All right," she said.

"Barring any unforeseen disasters," O'Brien quipped as he turned for the wall panels and she walked away, because in a way it was all going a little too smoothly. It was all falling into place a little too easily.

He ogled Nog standing stiffly at attention with his pudgy cheeks puffed up and swollen like some bloated dead fish. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing, Sir," Nog squeezed out between his locked jaw. "At your service, Sir. Whatever you need me to do."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "Well, you're making me sick just looking at you; get out of here. I'm serious. Go on. Get out of here. Don't worry about it. They don't need me, they sure as heck don't need you."

"I'm on duty, Sir." Nog's teary-eyes stared back at him.

"I said, get," O'Brien's thumb arced in the direction of the exit. "You're on duty when you can come back here and stand up. They'll be arguing about it for three hours anyway; who's on, who's off, who's where -- "

"Thank you, Sir!" The kid whirled away from him like a top.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute!" O'Brien caught him by the shoulder. "Before you go -- "

"Yes, Sir!" Nog shot back to attention with a snapping salute.

O'Brien's eyes rolled. "Knock it off. I just wanted to say I don't know what you overheard me saying to Keiko about Leeta and your father, but I didn't mean lying as in lying. She wasn't lying to him. She just told him what she wanted him to know. That's what adults do. Right or wrong, that's what they do. Don't worry about it, anything. You know where your mother is; you know where your father is. If your father wants to know where your mother is, all he's got to do is ask. Okay?"

The kid had no _clue what he was talking about whatsoever._

"All right, go ahead," O'Brien turned Nog loose with a permissive wave. He bolted out of there like Bashir had crawled, desperately.

"Yes…" Sisko agreed with Dax's laugh with a wandering glance toward the exit into the ship's interior.

She smiled. "You have about ten minutes until the system analyses are completed if you want to wait for Jake."

"Tempting," Sisko admitted, out of the corner of his eye catching the Chief's hands up and flailing.

Dax also noticed, her smile broadening. Her comment teasing. "You'll find the general recommendation to be they need to start a club."

Sisko looked back at her blankly. "Club?"

"The Chief and Leeta. And…" she admitted, "rumor has it they may be looking to indoctrinate Worf; long distance relationships," she clarified when Benjamin continued to seem uncertain.

"Ah," Sisko said. "Yes, of course. And true," he chuckled. "Quite true -- though I wouldn't be concerned about Mister Worf developing anything more than the normal degree of separation loneliness we all experience whenever apart from family and friends."

"I'm not," Dax assured.

"No," Sisko's chuckle deepened. "Separation comes with the territory, Commander, how well we all know that. Starfleet as respectful and understanding as it can be of its 'couples', if you will…" His thoughts and attention trailed back to the O'Briens. The Chief calmer, his hands down. Leniency, would probably also be a trait Starfleet incorporated, tolerance. Particularly in regard to its civilian associates. Either would be applicable to Keiko O'Brien. A woman Sisko did not know well and found difficult to know at all. Fair to say they did not see eye-to-eye on many issues, and had gone toe-to-toe on a few occasions. It wasn't a question of liking or not liking Mrs. O'Brien, he imagined he liked her well enough. He also however, found her actions too often highly questionable. Inappropriate, frankly. Involved in her husband's career at times when she should be maintaining a respectful distance, distant when she should be involved. 

She was a woman who gave the appearance of having great difficulty in letting go of what was past, the _Enterprise specifically. Scornful of the Chief's assignment to the station, the only conclusion Sisko could reach was that O'Brien's position here as Chief Engineer was somehow beneath him in her opinion._

That did not set well with Sisko, already no starry-eyed fan of Jean-Luc Picard or his _Enterprise. Indeed, while under the control of the Borg, Captain Jean-Luc Picard attacked the __U.S.S. Saratoga, killing Jennifer Sisko, Sisko's wife and Jake's mother when Jake was only twelve years old. Diplomacy, tact, training, got Sisko through where friendship, forgiveness, or even understanding never would in any dealings with Picard. Respectively, Chief O'Brien, on the other hand, was indisputably a brilliant engineer and man, plucked by Starfleet from the almighty __Enterprise and set down in Sisko's engineering bay. Not demoted, or deported, a fistful of recommendations touting O'Brien as the perfect man for the job, which he was. _

Simply carrying with him a ball and chain. "Excuse me," Sisko petitioned Dax, "I'd like to reiterate a personal thank you to Mrs. O'Brien before she leaves the bridge."

"Not at all," Dax turned away for the flight console with a shrug and a smile for Kira impatiently hovering over the analysis. "Anxious?"

"No," Kira waved. "Just…"

"Sick," Dax laughed. "Well…if you want to take overnight with Nog and Julian when they wake up, I think I can probably last until about midnight."

"Worf and O'Brien can take overnight; whatever. We'll figure it out -- Bashir?" Kira reacted violently, her stomach already upset enough. "No, no, no -- "

Dax laughed again. "Actually I thought he did pretty well the last time."

"No," Kira said firmly. "If Bashir wants to do something -- "

"He can post guard over the _Styx?" Dax joked._

"No, but that's an idea."

"Posting guard?" Dax said. "Do you really think that's necessary?"

"No. Bashir's an idea," Kira assured.

"If he wants to do something…" Dax nodded with a sympathetic smile after Nog suddenly bolting away from Ops for the ship's interior, noticing Keiko had also left and Benjamin was talking to Worf. "Well, there's always Lange's contaminated samples -- if I play it right," she winked at Kira. "That will not only give Julian a reason to play with his new equipment it will give him something to play with."

"I don't care if he lives there," Kira assured again, exiting the analysis. "Finally."

"Perfect as always?"

"Close enough. I'll take navigation."  
"I guess I'll take the helm," Dax agreed amicably. "We'll let Worf and the Chief fight it out over Ops -- though I have a idea," she hinted, "the Chief's hoping to spend a little time with Keiko?"

"He's got until midnight," Kira shrugged.

"Which leaves Worf at Ops," Dax nodded. "All right. In all fairness to Worf though I think we should begin duty rotation at 0600? 0700? I can be here at 0600."

"Either," Kira accepted.

"Sixteen hour shifts?"

"You and Nog can do twelve; the Chief also."

"Our mates and team members thank you," Dax teased.

"Whatever," Kira said. "Five minutes."

"I'll spread the word," Dax volunteered.

Sisko moved quickly from Dax to block Keiko's egress. He did not mean it to come across that way. In fairness to the troubled woman it was entirely possible that the problems between her and the Chief were differences of opinion. Different ideas. From career, to marriage, to children. It remained however a difference that should have been addressed prior to making any commitment, and under no circumstances was it a difference that should have been dropped down in the middle of his station. At best, Keiko O'Brien was an intelligent, capable woman herself. An educator, a botanist. At worst, she was a social-climbing shrike, fawning over Jake as son of the Commanding Officer, fawning over Bashir with his acute sense of grace and style. If she extended herself in true friendship with any of the station's hierarchy, it was probably Kira Nerys.

For reasons likely only the Bajoran Prophets and Sisko's God knew, since nurturing and bearing Keiko's son Kirayoshi in surrogate, Kira and Keiko became and remained friendly beyond the bond that had temporarily united them. Little Molly O'Brien normally quiet and unobtrusive, startling Sisko with her enthusiastic "Aunt Nerys". Kira uncharacteristic and equally spirited in her approach and handling of the little boy.

"Captain," Keiko paused in front of Sisko either intentionally or unintentionally blocking her way. From her perception, it fair to say that if she was a woman who could not see beyond her own wants and world, he was a man she found to be somewhat self-contradictory in his government and management of the crew and station. For example, the issue of a station school. Captain Sisko could not see the value or purpose of a school; he had to be shown. It was inconceivable to Keiko that she would have to defend her idea of a school to anyone. She had a child, he had a child. The reasons for her request began and ended there whether the student population eventually numbered twelve or two hundred, or it eventually closed. It closed. After five struggling years, life aboard the station too erratic to support it continuing. Allow it to flourish rather than fail. It was perhaps something Captain Sisko understood and knew from Day One. It was definitely something Keiko refused to accept one year after it all came to an end.

Most importantly however, if there was a man Keiko saw standing in front of her, it was a man whose wife had been killed during the line of duty, leaving him to raise their twelve-year-old son alone. There was probably a degree of personal resentment that it had been Captain Picard, a man whom she greatly admired, who unwilling killed Jennifer Sisko. But regardless, Jennifer Sisko had been killed. Jake Sisko left without his biological mother for the rest of his life. Was that something Chief Miles Edward O'Brien wanted incorporated in the epitaph of his life?

"Yes, Mrs. O'Brien," Sisko replied to her courteous address, trying to keep his attention on her, not her husband in the background. "I simply wanted to extend a personal thank you to you for accepting this position."

"It sounds interesting," she said simply. 

"Yes…" he agreed, watching her closely for any sign of dissention. He understood she had just returned after a year's absence. He understood that was one of the Chief's primary and continuing complaints, his wife's absences.He understood the shadow under which she had returned, the Chief's incarceration. And he understood most of all she was a woman whose work he knew, its caliber and hers, as he knew she was a woman who could be trusted. He felt his grin explode. It was probably the biggest smile he had ever given her.

"Welcome home in any event, Mrs. O'Brien," his hand patted her shoulder, completing her amazement. "You and your family have been missed."

Keiko left the bridge with a shake of her head. Sisko moved on in the direction of the Chief, stopping briefly to exchange a few words with Worf without surreptitious reason. Dax's joking comment about Worf potentially needing "a talking to" as much as the Chief, forgotten, and not taken seriously at the time she said it. Nog raced by them at one point, his hand clapped to his mouth. 

"Doctor Bashir's inoculations," Worf explained disgruntled. 

"No less a victim himself," Sisko agreed amused.

"Your own records are severely outdated," Worf informed him. "I cannot find where you have had a complete immunization series since taking command of the station."

Sisko looked at him.

Worf cleared his throat under the look. "Given the location and primitive conditions of the colony as described by Major Kira, I took the liberty of reviewing all inoculation records for the field team, as well as the crew of the _Defiant to ensure all were sufficiently protected in either direct, or indirect contact.__ Given your status as commander of the station I did not feel it to be excessive in including you in the review."_

"To the contrary, thoughtful, Mister Worf," Sisko smiled.

"If you insist," Worf said. "Though my motive at the time was to be thorough. Presuming standard protocol would require a medical review to have been conducted prior to my or Commander Dax's assignment aboard the _Rotarran, I was concerned. Particularly since Doctor Bashir upheld his inoculation records had been altered or misplaced, inaccurately reflecting him to be seriously remiss."_

Sisko laughed. "I have an idea, Mister Worf, you'll find Doctor Bashir was joking."

"I have since realized his," Worf assured. "Though current at the time of our assignment, Jadzia's inoculations have expired. My own review is scheduled to come due in three months."

"It's a date," Sisko winked. "I'll make an appointment with Doctor Bashir for the two of us immediately upon his return."

"This would be prudent," Worf agreed.

_Then there was Worf. Sisko reflected as he stepped on. Keiko O'Brien accepting Worf' as her husband's __Enterprise colleague was silent in her appraisal of Dax. He eyed O'Brien's back turned to him as he worked at the wall panel, sincerely hoping the Chief could see to understanding this assignment and refrain from unduly seeking to involve others in his general disapproval of Keiko's career choices._

"Huh?" O'Brien looked up at Sisko's voice.

Sisko smiled. "Everything all right?" he repeated.

"Oh, yeah. Kid's just sick as a dog. Stupid to even have him up here; no good to me or anyone else. Let him sleep it off; tomorrow is another day."

Sisko nodded. "The kid" he understood was Nog.

"Or did you mean the hands?" O'Brien asked, no one's innocent and therefore no one's fool. "You know, _the hands." He waved his in exaggerated demonstration looking more comical than anything else._

"Maybe both," Sisko acknowledged.

"Quark," O'Brien assured. "He's trying to collect an agent fee or something for Leeta watching the kids. It's okay. I'll take care of it. _No, works wonders. You know what I mean?"_

"Oh, yes," Sisko said.

"Other than that…" O'Brien returned to work with a shrug. "Ten minutes, maybe? Everything's fine; _all systems go." He chuckled suddenly. "Unless you want to consider three hours deciding duty rotation."_

"Chief, you've lost me," Sisko admitted.

"Easy enough to take care of as well," O'Brien promised. "Twelve hours. That's it, twelve hour shifts. Short. Sweet. _Standard protocol. None of this six hour, nine hour, rotating every four hours -- "_

"Chief," Sisko stopped him and the hands starting to wave again.

"Sure you don't want to come along?" O'Brien checked. "Plenty of room. Got an opening even; First Officer."

"Tempting," Sisko admitted for his own reasons; Jake. Certain that was not O'Brien's point, and not quite sure what the point was. "Still lost, Chief," he confessed. "Mister Worf is First Officer of the _Defiant."_

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "And whose _field team is it?"_

Field team. "Major Kira…" Sisko replied slowly. "But, again, that would be concerning the field team." He smiled suddenly, joking for the most part with a twinkle in his eyes. "Surely you're not suggesting there's an interest on either Mister Worf's or Major Kira's part of some form of role reversal?"

"Mass confusion," O'Brien assured. "I don't know, maybe it was just because the Anar guy was aboard and no one really knew what to do with him. I do know, never mind what's possible, it takes a crew to run her right. They've been briefed, get them up here. We're not in disaster mode over here, we're on a mission -- what?" he said to Dax showing up.

"Five minutes," she nodded.

"Wrong," O'Brien corrected, "ten. That's just what I'm in the middle of telling him. I don't care whose security you have to up how many notches to clear them for the bridge; do it. But I am spending some time with my wife; I'm having dinner with my wife."

Dax blinked wide-eyed at Sisko blinking wide-eyed back at her. "Actually…" she smiled for O'Brien, "you have until midnight. Kira feels duty rotations should begin at 0600 or 0700 -- as long as you and Worf don't mind overnight?" she felt Worf move up behind her, his breath warming the top of her head. 

"No," O'Brien recovered from his brief, though pleasant surprise. "No, hey, that's fine; thanks. I mean," he said, just in case they thought he was talking out of his left kidney, "I realize she's my wife, but I don't have to be crawling in bed with her ten minutes after she's in the door. I can at least try to be a little bit more discreet than that."

"Yes, well…" Sisko cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I think we can understand that," Dax grinned at Benjamin and the embarrassed flush spreading up from his collar.

"Definitely," Sisko assured with a pat of her arm and a glance toward the exit. "As I think -- "

"Yeah, hey, whoa! What am I doing?" O'Brien jumped back to the Ops console with a call for Rom and bridge duty. "Two minutes," he advised Sisko. "If you're going, you better go."

"I'll have Jake hail," Dax promised.

"It would be appreciated," Sisko thanked her, extending good luck and good health to everyone one last time as he left.

Worf held his huff of disapproval until Benjamin exited. "Major Kira's suggestion of six hour duty shifts is not acceptable."

Dax counted to three before she turned around to him with a smile. "Who said anything about six hours?"

He eyed her. "If duty rotations are to begin at 0600 -- "

"Begin," Dax agreed. "Actually Kira suggested two twelve hour rotations should provide sufficient coverage -- which, actually," she alerted O'Brien, "you can cancel Rom until 2400. Kira and I will be here with Worf. Nog should be fine by the morning for the three of us to relieve the three of you."

"Works for me," O'Brien nodded. "T-minus one, folks, unless you want me to reset everything."

"No," Dax assured.

Worf followed her to the helm. "I would prefer a full two duty shifts of sixteen hours."

"That's fine," Dax said, having an idea everyone would be working a full two duty shifts, except for possibly the Chief and Keiko, just simply in their own areas. Julian and Jake in the Infirmary or science lab, either aboard the _Styx or the __Defiant, probably both.__ Kira and Worf aboard the bridge. Her and Nog dividing their time between the bridge and lab, and Rom dividing his time between the bridge and his other engineering duties._

It was perhaps something she should have suggested aloud, or perhaps not as possibly it wouldn't have mattered; she wouldn't know. Agreeing with Worf, he interpreted her as being glib or abrupt. She didn't think she was being either if only because she didn't feel either. She felt…? Dax wasn't quite sure how she felt other than not physically as well as she would prefer or tried to appear.

She felt…_let me see...if Dax had the time or the inclination she would probably tip her head back and say something like __let me see. She felt irritated, yes, that Worf did not seem to respect she did not feel well enough to be bothered by nonsense, and it was nonsense. Kira wasn't attempting to usurp his authority anymore than she had attempted to on their first excursion into the Bajoran outer colonies. She was simply being Kira. Speaking the way Kira spoke, acting the way Kira acted. Perhaps a little more gruff or abrupt than she normally might, and that was also something Worf, for some reason, refused to accept or respect; __think, actually. What Worf was actually refusing to do was just think. Kira was anxious regardless whether or not she said she wasn't. She was anxious about the field mission. Nervous, concerned, about the colony and everything that went along with it. Angry with Shakaar, angry with Anar, the Klingons, the Dominion, Anon Dukat, everyone, and all rightfully so._

She was also not feeling well enough to hassle or be hassled about nonsense, and arguing about duty rotations, Dax maintained was sheer nonsense when all Kira really wanted to do was get underway, out of orbit of Bajor Prime, through the system into open space, which would be around 2400 approximately, yes. At which point the only thing Kira wanted to do, the same as her, was retire to her cabin and get up at 0600 and start again fresh. Other than that? No, Dax didn't believe she was thinking or feeling anything else in particular other than possibly this really was beginning to sound very much like some bizarre instance of déjà vu. 

It didn't matter. Her thinking, Worf not thinking, Worf was distinctly abrupt and emphatic, both in his tone and his grab for her wrist. "Jadzia!"

Dax went wild, rage rearing up inside of her. Her Trill markings exploding from violet to ebony black, her voice lashing as she tore her wrist away from him. "I said that's fine! You can rotate _two full duty shifts with Kira! Nog and I will be in the lab!"_

Kira's head snapped up, her mouth twisted in confusion, O'Brien gaped, his hands flying into the air. "Oh, jeez, here we go! Now we're going to have a goddamn murder on the bridge or something!"

"No, we're not going to have a murder!" Kira snapped. "What are you talking about?"

Dax was calm. Within a moment she was calm, as within a moment she had flown. The anger vomiting out the frustration building inside of her with Worf's huffs, his grunts, his groans and moans. She was calm and Worf was staring at her, and she really did not care. "No, it's all right," she said to Kira tugging at her arm.

"Are you sure?" Kira insisted.

"Yes, I'm sure," Dax said, realizing she didn't look calm although she felt calm. Her hands nervously wiping themselves across her hair, her face white and spots blanched to a shrimp color, but that had nothing to do with Worf, more Julian's inoculations.

"Sick," Kira nodded with an incensed whack of Worf. "What's the matter with you? You know she's sick!"

Worf huffed. "I was merely speaking to Commander Dax about the duty rotations."

"Never mind about the duty rotations, forget the duty rotations!"

Worf huffed. "As First Officer of the _Defiant it is my responsibility -- "_

"It's covered! Take the helm! You," she said to Dax, "it's all right. Get out of here."

"Oh, now, wait a minute -- " O'Brien butted back in.

"Call Rom," Kira stalked back to navigation.

"Huh?"

"Rom!" she barked, hailing the station to notify them to reset the docking release sequence.

_"Everything all right, Major?" Sisko inquired over the console._

"Yes, it's fine," Kira assured, disengaging the com link with a look around the bridge, settling on the Chief. "I told you to call Rom."

"Fine, I'll call Rom," O'Brien surrendered.

"No, it's all right," Dax interrupted. "Really, Kira, I'm fine. Worf can take Ops."

"Okay, I won't call Rom," O'Brien's hands were heading for the air again.

"Knock it off!" Kira warned and he glared at her. She ignored him to verify again with Dax. "You sure?"

"I'm positive," Dax assured.

"Okay, fine," Kira accepted and sat down.

Dax looked at Worf stubbornly silent and as stubbornly not moving. "The Chief wants to spend some time with Keiko," she said evenly, as evenly as she could. "He wants to spend some time with his wife -- she's his wife!" the pitch of her voice rose shrill again.

"Right!" O'Brien hollered out. "She's my wife, and I'll tell you what. I'll make it real easy for everyone; _I'm out of here!" And he was. He was gone. They could stand there ordering the release sequence reset forty-seven times for all he cared; he was out of there._

Dax was waiting when Worf's head turned back to her from watching the Chief. "Now take Ops," she said.

He sighed. "Jadzia…"

"Do it!" she pointed.

He did with an accompanying stiff notice to Kira. "I will take Ops."

"Whatever," Kira shrugged with a nod for Dax assuming her seat at the helm. "T-minus thirty seconds."

"Yes," Dax concurred. "T-minus thirty seconds. Engaging rear thrusters; standby."

"Standing by," Kira said.

Dax closed her eyes for the moment it took the thrusters to power on. She opened them with a slight smile for Kira glancing her way. "I'm fine. You?"

"Can't come too soon," Kira assured.

"No," Dax agreed. "It can't."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Eventually the end did come. Jake returned shortly after they pulled away, Dax pointing him toward the com system and Benjamin nervously waiting on the other end. They talked for a few minutes, Jake remaining on deck for a couple of hours until he became restless and bored by not enough to do and excused himself to a remote corner of the ship to sit and think and write. At 2400 or close enough Dax left the bridge and Worf to the helm, Rom at Ops, Kira maintaining her position at navigation, the Chief a minute or two late. O'Brien exited the turbolift though when it arrived and she was glad for Kira's sake. Hers?

"Hey, I just want to say I'm sorry about what happened before," the Chief stopped her to apologize.

"Everything's fine, Chief," Dax assured.

  


"No, wait a minute," he said, "listen to me for moment. Because you know it's rough, it really is. It's different when you're married; everything changes; I know. Worf's not trying to be hard nosed about anything, he really isn't. No more than I'm trying to lord over Keiko. It's just different. It's not a relationship, it's a marriage. We miss you more, we want you there more, because when you're not it's like a piece of us is missing, which it is, and we don't like it. That's the plain and simple truth. We just don't like it and there's no way we're going to, so give him a break. You understand what I'm saying to you?"

"Oh, I understand," Dax said.

"Good," O'Brien nodded. "Good. But then, heck," he chuckled, "you ought to. You've been a guy -- a _man for what? Eighty, ninety years?"_

"Close enough," Dax smiled.

"There's no difference," O'Brien assured. "I don't care what species you are, there's no difference."

"Hmmm…Some," Dax imagined if only because there were some differences among the males within the same specie genus. "But you know what I find most fascinating?"

"Hey, hit me with it," O'Brien said. "I'm over here handing out advice to Worf, Rom, when the three of us should 

probably be asking you."

"Possibly," Dax agreed. "Because I can't understand why it's assumed it's not changed or different for us. As rough, tough, lonely, with us missing you as often and as much as you miss us…And that the last thing we need…" her finger poked into O'Brien's burly, manly chest, gently backing him up, away from her, "is some self-absorbed jerk demanding we understand him when he hasn't bothered to understand us for two minutes." She left.

"Point," O'Brien said. "That's a good point."

Exhausted and tense throughout her turn on the bridge Dax was now wide awake as she lay on the bunk in her quarters. Up, down, she was rifling through her duffel looking for something to read and finding a handful of Klingon music Worf had packed away for her as a goodbye present. Touched, she wanted to be annoyed. Annoyed, she knew she should be touched. 

"Worf," she sat down on the floor with a sigh, cradling the tapes in her hands and having no idea what to do with him or them other than knowing Julian would have a fit if he saw them.

"Julian…" her head snapped up. Thinking, wondering, and just wanting to know how he was and to see him, she dropped the tapes and jumped up, exiting her cabin to find him.

He was down the end of her same corridor, the last cabin next to the toilet, across from the shower, sound asleep and sprawled on his bunk, making the most of the room he had available to him.

He looked extremely innocent and extremely young. Dax crouched next to the bunk with a smile and a light kiss on his cheek. He stirred, the kiss and loose ends of her hair tickling his face, his eyes opening slightly, glazed with sleep and not quite sure of his surroundings and then suddenly concerned when he realized she was leaning over him.

"Jadzia!" Bashir sat up with a start, panicked that she might be sick or something worse was wrong.

Her fingers touched his lips quieting him and coaxing him to get up. "Come on," she drew back to collect his discarded uniform and boots.

Bashir was obedient, though curious, pulling on his jumpsuit. "Darling, what…"

She kissed him. Her wouldn't say so much like a man, other than her strength was that of a man's pulling him into her arms. It was odd, strangely appealing at the same time. He surrendered to the suggestion and excitement her aggression inspired, perhaps wondering somewhere in the back of his mind why he was getting dressed.

Dax smiled under the kiss, jarring him back into a sense of reality when she pulled away from him again, urging him to finish dressing.

"Yes, all right," Bashir nodded, giddy, groggy, he knew he had to be a ridiculous sight hopping up and down on one foot as he pulled on his boots but he didn't care, there was something fanciful about the situation that he wanted to give into. Obviously, because though he exerted himself, kissing her once he managed to get his shoes on, he was clearly following her lead. She grabbed him by the hand, peering around the corner of the door to check the status of the corridor that was empty and quiet and they were off like two escaping thieves, dashing for the turbolift.

"Where…" Bashir started to ask as the door closed and he found himself back in her arms.

"Shuttlebay," Dax instructed the computer.

Bashir blinked. "Shuttlebay…" he said, but he was being smothered and it took precedence for the moments it took for them to arrive, which, by then he didn't care where they were, or if they just halted the program. The door swished open and he looked up to stare out at the looming, silent structure of the runabout.

"The _Styx…" he said._

"Come on," Dax had him by the hand and they were darting across the floor, up the hatch, into the interior to the midsection and her crew quarters.

"Why you little minx," Bashir whistled impressed, disbelieving as she pulled him inside the cabin, tugging his jumpsuit down off his shoulders and whipping his T-shirt up over his head. "I can't believe it. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Hm," her mouth closed over his with intensity, murmuring, "I want you, Julian, I want you."

It was back to being odd, a mixture of appealing and uncertainty, her building aggression inspiring his. Bashir could feel himself already starting to sweat, hear his brain trying to reason with his inflamed senses that with each passing moment more than a risk of discovery was increasing as they stood there clutching at each other like their lives depended on it.

"Because it's madness, darling," he managed with a gasping breath, meaning the setting, what they were doing, not her. "It's madness."

She stepped back, yanking him up to her with such force that they both fell against the frame of the bunk and he woke up from his frenzy enough to realize not only was it possible someone could get hurt, but how this really was not what he wanted.Not for her, him, them. To the contrary, it was everything he didn't want. Desperate, primitive, approaching animalistic.

"No, I can't, darling," his moan answered her moan about wanting him, his hands clutching at hers clutching him, trying to pull away from her. "I can't."

For God's sake he could feel his mouth watering. He was drooling. One would think they were in the peak of sex and they weren't. He'd be dead of a heart attack, insane, long before they culminated the act.

"Darling, I can't!" He was free, slamming and pinning her arms against the frame of the upper bunk, gasping for breath, trying to reason with her, explain. "I can't make love to you simply because I'm afraid that if I don't I won't be able to. This is madness; it's insane." He was pleading with her. Aware she was staring at him, almost glaring at him. "For God's sake, it's only two days. If we can't control ourselves for two days!"

She pulled loose of him easily, pushing him away. Much of his strength relying on his weight he heaved against her to keep her pinned back and he had to weigh twenty pounds less than her.

"Jadzia!" he said as she whirled for the door. She ignored him and he was grabbing up his T-shirt, struggling back into it, and chasing out after her.

"Jadzia!" Bashir insisted and she stopped in the hatchway to look back at him, expressionless, sullen. He nodded, extending his hand. She stared at it. "Come on," he said. "Come back inside."

She looked away but didn't leave and Bashir took a chance, pulling his jumpsuit up over his shoulders as he moved up to her. "Jadzia?"

She folded her arms, closing herself off, silent and angry. Bashir already knew that, not entirely sure why or what about. Rejection, possibly. Ridiculous because he wasn't, nor had he rejected her. The situation, yes. The timing. He touched her arm and her head whipped around to glare at him.

"Talk to me," he encouraged softly. "That is what some of this is supposed to be about." 

She eyed him, shoving his hand off her arm and stalked forward to the helm where she paced before dropping down into the seat. He followed, perching on the console in front of her, waiting. Eventually she sighed, still sullen. In her eyes, her expression, her head as it cocked. "Explain the rules to me again.Explain them to me."

"Rules…" Bashir's mouth opened in surprise.

"Yes," Dax nodded, "the rules, and don't you dare tell me you don't know what I'm talking about."

"Except I don't," he apologized. "I'm sorry, but I really don't."

"Well, I'll make it simple for you. Why is all right for you to break them, but it isn't if I do? Because you thought of it? Because they're your rules, not mine, which they're not!"

Bashir stared perplexed aft to the midsection.

"Julian!" Dax insisted.

Bashir shook his head again in apology. "I'm sorry, darling, I'm not ignoring you. I am just trying to understand what you're saying because I certainly never meant it to come across that way."

"Well, it did!"

"Yes, that much I do realize. However, in all honesty I don't understand why?"

"What do you mean why?" she snapped.

"I rejected you," he agreed with what seemed to be the root of her complaint. "Except I didn't. Perhaps what I don't understand is why you would even think that?"

Why she would think that. "Because!" her arm flailed back toward the cabin.

"The setting," Bashir nodded. "The temptation. Darling, that's what I rejected, not you."

Dax stared at him. "It's the same thing!"

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is! Oh, this is ridiculous," her head dropped back with a groan, angry, embarrassed tears stinging her eyes and they were ridiculous, too.

Bashir's confusion passed into uneasy concern. Her emotional display touching the lover in him wanting to console and cure also touched the doctor.His instincts telling him, as they had with Leeta, there was an underlying cause to her stress, either known or unknown to her, with it probably being most significant that she wasn't Leeta. The irrational argument and tear-stained cheeks so atypical of her, it was the second time in two weeks her posture collapsed under hardly grueling circumstances. She was in love, not pain. It far less intriguing and astoundingly feminine of her that she would become hysterical in the process than it was potentially alarming.

"No, it isn't ridiculous," he reassured gently. "Darling, you're upset. There's nothing ridiculous about it."

"Of course I'm upset! Julian, I just wanted to be with you. That's all I wanted. I didn't care where, how, I just wanted to be with you. But, no, that's not acceptable, it's not allowed except when it's you!" She pushed her hair back. "And then…let me see…It can be in the turbolift. It can be in the cargo hold. The commissary. The Ark. The Town Center. Your quarters. The lab. It can even be in the shower! It just can't be me. My idea."

"Spontaneity," Bashir guessed.

"Yes," Dax nodded. "Spontaneity." 

"And I ruined it."

"Yes," Dax nodded. "You ruined it."

"I wasn't trying to."

"Well!" she said. "You did. You really did. And you know what, Julian? It's not acceptable. It's not allowed. I am not there only when you want me to be, I'm there because I want to be!" She slapped the arm of her chair, her eyes burning red. Angry with him for making her upset, seeing her upset, angry with herself for being upset, defensive over her right to be upset.

Which she had every right to her feelings, Bashir did not begrudge her the right. Actually beginning to feel slightly relieved that all that might be wrong was a fairly common enough need for reassurance and comfort. "Come here," he slipped down off the console, his hand extended.

Dax gaped at him.

"Damn the rules," Bashir nodded. "I do anyway, you're right. So I'll just be honest and say it. Damn the rules."

"That's the whole point," she groaned.

"That I ignore them, and you can't," he verified.

"Yes!"

"That's perception, darling," he promised. "Actually, we're both ignoring them together, with the issue simply being at whose idea."

"Simply?" she accused. Admittedly a poor choice of word however irrelevant to what he was actually saying, she nevertheless seized it and ran with it, condemning and vilifying him. "Julian, you didn't even speak to me for four days!"

Bashir could feel his headache pounding, attempting to squelch a newly rising personal concern that she wanted an argument, in fact was pushing for there to be an argument between them. He declined, focusing and trying to maintain a balance in his response. "Avoided you, yes. I tried to explain why beyond some tedious dissertation on how such is the psychological nature of the Human male to retreat periodically."

"Worf!" she blasted him. "I know why, and I am so tired of hearing about Worf, thinking about Worf. Worrying, wondering, revolving everything around Worf; it has nothing to do with Worf. It has to do with you. You want me there, when you want me there. No consideration for anyone, including me. There is no difference between the station, the Ark, the _Defiant! Only what you __deem different."_

"Worf," Bashir agreed. "What I deem different is Worf. Kira and Keiko are aboard the Ark -- or the _Styx, in this instance. Jake, Nog. That's not saying they can't, or won't realize our relationship; they very well may. It will probably be a small miracle if they don't. We are talking six weeks. But I'm far less concerned with what their responses might be than I am with what I know Worf's would be. Anger. Quite probably, violence. It's not even necessarily relevant that he's Klingon, other than the sheer size or power of him, it's the fact that you're his mate."_

"Worf is aboard the station," Dax nodded.

"The station is massive, darling. You could be a thousand places, all legitimately so, compared to perhaps the ten you could be here aboard the _Defiant. Apart from Worf would have to be truly deranged to do something like barge into my quarters in hopes of finding you and I together and attack us, he would first have to be looking for problems or troubles to find any. Seeking them out, suspecting us for a reason. That's what the rules are actually all about, not to hinder or control you or I. I don't want to give Worf a reason to suspect, think, or be concerned about anything. I want him to be completely in the dark. No conflict, no confrontations, and certainly no harm to come to you."_

She stared at him blankly. Bashir smiled, stooping to crouch in front of her, picking up her hand whether she wanted him to or not. She didn't fight him, and he cradled it lovingly between his. "Which hardly explains why I would then arbitrarily break them if I'm so concerned about some ill will befalling you."

"No, it doesn't," Dax assured.

"Perhaps because I don't like them?" he offered. "Or want them? Any more than you do? Annoyed that they're necessary? Which they are? The truth is, I don't want conflict or confrontation from any direction, not only Worf. I want everything to be perfect. For us to have the very best opportunity to develop, thrive, and succeed in our relationship. The conflicts are out there. They'll be there. We'll have to face them, and we will face them, later. When we're ready. Stronger. More confident. Trusting," he promised. "Me, not you. I swear, darling, I never meant to give you the idea that you have any less right to initiate intimacy than I do. If I felt or thought anything about you approaching me, I thought _did she think this through? Because I know I haven't, it wasn't my idea. The turbolift was my idea. It may have seemed spontaneous, or I may have seemed spontaneous, but I can assure you, I evaluated our surroundings, calculated the risks, decided they were acceptable and kissed you."_

"I can't stand you," Dax said.

Bashir laughed. "It does sound clinical, doesn't it?"

"It's stupid!" she snatched her hand away. "Julian, we're aboard the _Styx, not the bridge. Give me some credit for having at least __thought even if I didn't walk around evaluating risks, calculating odds, if only common sense!"_

"Trust, darling," he assured. "Not credit, trust. It's a question of trust. My ability to trust automatically. Nothing to do with you."

"I don't care what it is, just do it," she hissed. "I don't care what you thought, meant, felt. I felt immoral, humiliated, and I will never, _NEVER feel that way again!" _

She was sobbing, gasping tears almost uncontrollably, her hair hanging over her hands as she buried her face trying to hide and contain the convulsions looking to vomit out her misery and be done with it. Bashir's relief evaporated into paralyzing fear, wanting to bolt for the Infirmary and too frightened to leave her. "Jadzia…" he implored desperately.

"I'm sick," she choked. "Julian, I'm sick!"

"Yes. Slightly feverish as well, and it's probably not helping matters."

"No, you're not helping matters," she caught her breath. "I don't care how much you think, you still don't just _think! It never extends beyond you."_

"Too much actually," he nodded fervently. "I think too much, about everything, especially you. All those concerns about wanting everything perfect constantly on my mind. Jadzia, I love you madly. I want to protect you, and that includes from anyone's vulgar slander, certainly not ever want to cause you to feel vulgar in any way. Is that what you're possibly feeling?" he asked, desperate to determine the cause of her distress. "The pressures of someone's moral standard? Please say you're not. Because we will always be wrong to those who believe we are wrong."

"I don't care what anyone thinks!" she exclaimed.

"Are you sure?" he pressed. "Darling, that isn't an accusation, or criticism, merely a question. Because I'll tell you I do care. I care very much what anyone says about you."

"Well, in that way, yes," she nodded impatiently. "But that's not the point. Julian, two weeks ago we embarked on a field mission, _not to have an affair. Did I __know I was going to have an affair with you? Was I __planning to have an affair with you? Was I even __thinking about having an affair with you? No! But I'm having an affair with you. That doesn't even make any sense. None of this makes any sense.It's all just happening so fast, too fast, I can't even think!" she dropped back in her seat exhausted. "I can't think," she shook her head. "Never mind anyone not being able to think. I have no idea what is even happening." She picked at the arm of the chair, wiping the tears, mucus and saliva from her face with the sleeve of her uniform._

Bashir frowned, trying to dissect what she was saying. "Yes, well, apart from I have to disagree with everything you just said, I don't for a moment believe anything you just said. While you may not have known or planned our relationship, you had to be thinking about us. I'm not quite sure why you have this idea we just happened. We didn't just happened. We happened over a period of six years. That's hardly quick. The only thing that could be said to have happened quickly between us was once acknowledging our love for each other we wanted to share it, solidify our standing with each other. But that physical desire, the same as our love, was already there. No more happening in a moment than anything else between us."

He stared at her, swallowing back the ache he could feel building in his throat. "Jadzia, are you having second thoughts?"

She eyed him loftily. "About?"

"Us," Bashir said frankly. "Again, that's only a question."

"No," she shook her head and his eyes closed. "Are you?"

"God, no," he assured with a daring light touch of her sticky cheek. "Let me get you something."

He returned quickly with a sterile wipe, his medical tricorder and a hypospray. Dax blew her nose as he scanned her. "How sick am I?"

Bashir smiled. "I suspect much better than you were a few minutes ago, and even a few hours. There's also Dax to consider. Doubt if he finds these inoculations any less repulsive then we do -- wanting to spit them out if he could," he closed his tricorder with a wink, applying the hypospray to her throat.

"That's not an answer," she yawned almost immediately. "What did you just give me?"

"A mild relaxer," Bashir admitted. "For your stomach. Hardly potent enough to induce sleep -- which is where I suspect that yawn comes from; a desire to sleep. Did you manage to get any rest at all today?"

"If you call living on the bathroom floor for two hours rest," she took the tricorder away from him to review her screening.

"How well I know and can sympathize with that," Bashir laughed. "Between the Rudellian plague and Kora virus, I'm not sure which one was worse. If Anar had to choose a rendezvous sight for his Maquis did it have to be the Cardassian border? Quite frankly, apart from the Klingon madness I'm surprised the only illness they've contracted is Rigelian fever."

"Increased neurotransmitter output," Dax roughly handed him back the tricorder.

"Infinitesimal," Bashir reassured. "Along with some residual nausea, largely due to irritation by this point, a mild fever, and some minor congestion of the esophageal passage -- also due for the most part to irritation. Other than that?" he smiled again. "Dax is also no more immune to the effects of anxiety than you are. He's complaining a little, we'll call it that. Probably tired himself and wondering what all this commotion is really about…I can relate to that," his thumb caressed her cheek. "Respecting everything you've said I wish an apology and I love you could somehow set your heart and mind to rest. Can they?"

"I suppose that would depend on how sick I am," Dax replied flatly.

Bashir's eye twitched, not in a wink. "I'm sorry?" he said.

"How sick am I?" she repeated. 

Bashir glanced at the tricorder. "You and Dax? Darling, I just explained the increased neurotransmitter output is entirely normal. You feel poorly. But there's certainly no sustained damage or trauma…from the immunization series…" he was gesturing with the tricorder, offering it to her to see again for herself, a light breaking as she sat there looking tired and worn. "Are you talking about Curzon?"

"You said I was sick," she reminded.

He said a great deal more than that. He said she was emotionally stressed to the point of being suicidal. Self-destructive. A victim of repeated psychological and physical abuse. Possibly in the early stages of rejection, and regardless, losing the battle to live her life from under the oppressive and vicious control of Curzon. Those terrifying findings and theories streaming unemotionally out across the monitor screen to be read and then dropped. Never to be discussed or even mentioned again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"Oh, my God, Jadzia," Bashir dropped to his knees in front of her. Horrified he could be so blind, dense, for that matter so callous as to not realize or expect it to eat at her like some slow poison over the past two weeks regardless of whatever other glorious or uplifting event occurred. What did he think she did? Simply forget about them like he did?

"How sick am I?" Dax coolly repeated for the third time.

"No, that's an awful word," Bashir begged. "It's inaccurate for one. Darling, please, you have to understand, much of what you read was only the computer's opinion. Yes, you're stressed. You're horribly stressed. Traumatized, abused. Surrendering to Curzon's bizarre fixation with the Klingon Empire, partially in your own defense because how else can you be expected to defend yourself? You can't.

  


"But, darling, if for a moment I thought there was any validity to the idea of rejection we'd be at the Institute despite my loathing for them, hardly en route to some field expedition. It's just something I'm terrified of happening. Of course I am. You've been through this before."

"Belar," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Jadzia you almost died; out of the question. There's no way it's reaching anywhere near that extreme; it's simply not. I understand enough about the mechanics of the integration process to know what to watch for, damn if I'm not technically qualified, and certainly so do you know firsthand the symptoms of rejection having lived through their beastly attempt to repress Dax's experiences with Belar at any costs, including you; we'll work it out together.

"A fine thing for me to say, I know," he consoled her, guilt-ridden and nauseated by what he had done, or failed to do. "Hardly caring enough not to load all of this on to you and then just leave you there to handle it however best you could; overwhelmed by love certainly not acceptable as some form of defense or excuse."

"You have a funny way of showing it some times," she agreed.

"Selfish," he assured. "Utterly. Totally, totally inexcusable. Though I was overwhelmed, still am. In that way you're right. It did happen so fast. One moment we were apart and then next we were together. Jadzia, when I kissed you it was the dynamics of some star exploding. And when you ever said I love you? I swear I couldn't hear or see anything else. What couldn't we conquer? What can't we? I don't know, I can't explain what I was or wasn't thinking. Some bizarre, irrational belief that now anything that was wrong was somehow miraculously fixed?Isn't that just so completely insane?"

"Romantic, maybe," she allowed.

"Yes," Bashir said. "In the meantime you're attempting to assimilate all of this on your own. Little wonder you're questioning everything. Sheer wonder you're not panic-stricken because you're right, of course. Simply because Curzon appears quiet, doesn't mean he's gone."

"I didn't say I accepted your theory," she stopped him.

"No," Bashir felt the softness of her cheek under his hand, seeing the log of love-batterings she had endured. "And don't I wish I could be called upon to have to defend it, except I can't be. Facts are facts, darling, and they're awful facts. It isn't the point of your existence, nor Dax's. Nothing you or he has to learn.You're a living archive, not simply some testimonial to the existence of domestic violence in the modern universe --

"Regardless of what it's called," he stopped her. "Culture is not an excuse. It never has been and it never will be. Civilized worlds respect simply because a past generation upheld some horrifying practice or belief it doesn't mean they do. In fact, refuse to. That is the nature of life. Its guiding light, its responsibility, _to grow. To recognize and acknowledge its destructive cycles and patterns and stop them. Just like you go forth into the future with the knowledge and information it has accumulated -- a future, or present, darling, I insist, that doesn't need you to bring to its attention of how there are worlds of extremists who simply refuse to grow. The Klingon. The Cardassian. The Ferengi. The Romulan, and how many countless others? We already know._

"We do," he promised. "Our children will know as well. The wounds and scars of our lifetime will be there for years. We don't need yours to drive the point home. Curzon's work with the Federation is over, it's done, it's past. If it was wrong for Torias to turn back and pick up Nilani's hand, it's wrong for you to turn back and pick up Curzon's. It can't be both ways. I'm sorry, but it simply can't be. You're a scientist. Premiere Distinctions in exobiology, zoology, astrophysics -- "

"Jadzia couldn't have been on the wrong path?" she interjected.

She was speaking of herself in the third person. Bashir's head dipped. "At least not transferred to the perfect assignment? A science officer aboard a station, rather than one in the field? Yes, of course, that's entirely possibly. We can certainly explore that avenue, along with all others. What it may mean and how it may manifest itself. Perhaps finding out Curzon is as utterly innocent as you, not exercising undue and unfair control; I don't believe that. I'll be honest with you, but yes, it is possible; what isn't?

"It's also entirely possible," he said, "you may simply require a certain degree, or level of physicality that life here doesn't generally afford you, at least not on a regular basis. What happens then when you're deprived? Common sense says you seek to obtain satisfaction elsewhere. Toxins aren't the only addictions, darling. Exercise stimulates your brain, not only your body. However, no theory as to how or why negates the abuse and misuse you've had to endure. The physical, emotional, and mental damage that is also addictive, and so debilitating. My concern is intensified, not blinded by the fact that I love you. I'm seeking to cure, fix, identify the cause and areas of danger, not point a finger of blame. If I were, quite frankly, I would be pointing my finger at more than Mister Worf and Curzon. I would be pointing it at everyone who insists on identifying you with Curzon, as Curzon, affectionately or otherwise, _old man. You are not __old man. You're Jadzia. Living your life to become who you are; joined. Achieving in your field to ensure, not only your acceptance to the Symbiosis Commission, but your value as a host to Dax. Darling, if the Institute felt Dax would best be served, or serve, repeating an existence as a Federation Ambassador there was no reason to choose you. Which they did choose you. No more some clone of Curzon's than Curzon was a clone of Torias."  
"Yes, all right," Dax said wearily. "I can accept there's some substance to your theory, Julian, I'm just not willing to accept Curzon as being the root." She bit her lip, honestly greatly disturbed by the thought._

As well she should be. "Darling, while it may be simple by comparison, Curzon utterly refused to surrender his control of Odo at the closure of your zhian'tara rite."

"He can be obnoxious," Dax admitted.

"Controlling," Bashir insisted. "Domineering. Selfish. Power mad. Belar was at least honest, murdering when he felt like murdering, not depleting his victim like some vampire. As Belar, for all his own madness, was powerless against Curzon's control of Dax. Unable to peel away at the Institute's memory repression and reassert himself into Curzon's awareness for eighty years. But he certainly could reassert himself with you."

"Yes," Dax said. "And I don't know, Julian, perhaps the weakness lies within me, not Curzon. Something I have to learn -- for Dax to carry forth." She smiled at him slightly for the first time in an hour? "Other than the joy and experience of being in love. Knowing, recognizing, feeling it. When it matters most. At the time, not after the fact like Torias."

"I suppose that's also possible," Bashir answered quietly. Generously, also, Dax knew.

She nodded. "Julian, the training at the Symbiosis Commission is not unlike textbook. A script, guideline. Rules and regulations. Somewhat different to then go out and live it especially when the whole point is for Dax to learn. Can you understand that?"

"Absolutely. For all the field training Starfleet provides, for all the simulated programs, lose your patient for the first time. Not some holographic reenactment or drill to prepare you, but a being. A soul. A life passing. Over. Dead. At your hands, or by your hands, if only because there was no way you could stop it. I'll never forget that experience for the rest of my life; I still never forget them; never accept. Yes, there is a remarkable difference in learning, knowing, and living something. You cannot begin to compare them." 

"No," Dax agreed. She studied him. "A star exploding?"

Bashir smiled. "Definitely. I can't think of a better way to describe it."

It was probably close enough. "You're a fascinating man, Julian Bashir."

She spoke like she was a thousand years old intrigued to find there were still things that could excite or ignite her. Bashir grinned. "You just decided this?"

"No," Dax shook her head. "No, I didn't just decide." She remained pensive, the slight smile on her face relaxed back into benign, thoughtful expression.

"Talk to me," he invited when she didn't speak for several seconds. "I'm expressing my concerns, what are yours? Do you have any specifically? Any questions you haven't been able to answer for yourself?"

"Worf?" she apologized.

Yes, of course, Mister Worf. A victim of Curzon's ruthless power the same as she. Bashir looked away; he looked back. "Darling, simply because you are enabling Mister Worf to be precisely who and what he is, Klingon, doesn't make him a victim. To the contrary, Mister Worf is already who and what he is; a wolf in sheep's clothing. An individual with his own lengthy list of emotional and psychiatric problems, including an identity crisis, none of which are your responsibility or concern. You're not a doctor, and you're certainly not a punching bag."

"No," Dax shook her head. "No, Julian, you're thinking emotionally."

"Yes," Bashir said. "I loathed Mister Worf from the moment he walked onto this station, long before he ever sat down next to you. When he did, I hated him. Less for the fact that he was sleeping with you than for the fact that he was hitting you. I don't care what are the _true reasons behind the violence. Whether in his deranged mind it's something he feels you deserve, or simply something that gives him great pleasure; I beg to differ. The idea that someone would take such an abominable act and justify it as a cultural oddity, capsule it, entitle it with the word __love, is an abomination unto itself. The premise alone is enough to make any sane person vomit on the spot."_

"Stagnation," Dax nodded calmly. "If you're right and Curzon is in actuality stagnating me, then I am stagnating Worf, and I can't…" she said as Bashir closed his eyes again, "I can't understand why I would do that? Why, or how, I wouldn't see that I was?"

"Because you aren't," Bashir said. "Stagnating Mister Worf how? Darling, to stagnate someone suggests they have potential. What's Mister Worf's potential?"

"I don't know," Dax frowned.

"No," Bashir said coldly. "Neither do I. He's already mastered the art of standing around like some sort of pillar of Klingon sobriety while indulging in the ecstasy of sex culminated while beating his mate's head against some wall. Wearing his bangs, and cuts and bruises like badges, the two of you spending the day looking and feeling the part of two spent animals."

"Are you through?" Dax asked when he paused.

"Yes," Bashir said. "Yes, I'm through. Forewarned, darling," he chanced a smile. "Don't ask me to understand or accept Mister Worf as innocent. It's not going to happen."

She nodded. "I'm concerned that I'm going to unwittingly repeat the same pattern with you. I don't want to do that. I love you, Julian.And I want to…" she thought, trying not to notice the stinging sensation of tears returning to her eyes. "I want to love you the way I love you; more than anything. Never desperate, and never because I feel I have to. Is that possible? I don't know," she said. "I really don't know. I know I just wanted to be with you so badly, I don't even know why. I have no idea why."

"Because you're in love," he said, somewhat in awe of the innocence in her confusion. "You were upset? You needed a hug?"

Dax frowned again. "Are you sure?"

Bashir laughed. "No, actually. If you were Human, I would say, yes, absolutely. Seriously though, I do know that I would much prefer to think those are the reasons why rather than becoming paranoid your wanting to be with me is because you're acting out some sort of external symbiotic bonding."

"That would be extreme, wouldn't it?" Dax had to laugh a little also.

"Definitely," Bashir assured. "Who knows though. There may be a degree of validity to your concern considering you are joined, and you know the joy of living as a joined Trill."

"Oh, I do, Julian," she said. "I love my life."

"Good," Bashir smoothed the few new tears that had stained her cheek. "I want you to love it. I want you to live it. Can you ever forgive me for being so obsessed with you wanting to include me that I would in turn neglect you so horribly?"

"Well…" she said though really only to torture him. "Probably. But then I also didn't sit you down to demand we talk."

"True," his thumb creased the corner of her mouth, wanting to kiss her so badly with that bizarre notion it would make everything all better. Repair whatever lingering strains remained between them. "I'll tell you a secret. Real or imaginary, I wouldn't be concerned about repeating some pattern and developing a parasitic relationship with me. Not only would I never allow you to harm yourself in any way, the six year history between us is very real. That's the root of our love, its foundation, route of development. Firm. Solid. Undeniable. Nothing unhealthy about it. We love each other, and we both just want it to work. A little desperately perhaps, on both our parts. But that's also understandable when we've denied and starved ourselves of each other for so long."

"We need time together, Julian," she decided.

"Yes," he agreed. "A block of time, that's very true. No duty calls, settling for the moments afforded us on some field assignment, but uninterrupted time. It's not something easily arranged, but if we really want to I'm sure we'll find a way."

"I really want to," she said.

"So do I. Oh, darling, so do I."

"Good." She settled back in her seat with a smile, looking so provocative.Bashir recalculated the risks of breaking the rules, seizing her in his arms, and the argument starting all over again. He decided against it. "Feeling better? Your stomach?" 

"Some. Yes," she nodded. "You?"

"Fine, actually. For the most part. But then I slept. Four, five hours? Works wonders once the initial crisis is over. Rom had the right idea." He checked his watch that he didn't have with him.

_"01:20:06," the computer reported._

Earlier than he thought, but still late enough. "Come on," he stood up, collecting his tricorder, hypospray and her hand. "I seem to remember something about Jake volunteering to be wide awake and alert by some frightful hour. Meanwhile, I'm sure we can work something out between our schedules. Give us some time to be together to talk, if we want to. Or simply stare at each other over our respective cups of tea," he joked as they entered the Infirmary. "Perhaps at some point you're off duty?"

"Possible," Dax said. "Nog and I are scheduled to be relieved from the bridge at 1900 to assist you and Keiko in the lab."

"Well, that's perfect," Bashir approved. "Not only does that allow Nog a chance to become familiar with the study's premise before arrival, I can set him up with Jake under Keiko's supervision while you and I take a break somewhere neutral like the commissary."

"That should be fine."

"Definitely," Bashir averted his eyes to look around the sterile, pristine laboratory. "Actually, I'm even considering allowing us to clutter in here now rather than bother about setting everything up in the _Defiant."_

_Dax laughed. "Familiarize yourself with any differences there may be in the systems?"_

"Something like that," Bashir grinned.

"I just may get my analysis of Lange's samples yet."

"1900. Promise. It'll be waiting for you, next to your tea."

"Where have I heard that before?" She watched him set the tricorder and hypospray away.

"From me. But, no, this time it will definitely be there." 

He ordered lights out as they walked for the door, the Infirmary dipping into darkness, a minor awkwardness in the brief silence between them as they each suddenly didn't have anything to say. The flat sole of one of their boots made a funny squeaking sound against the floor. She could see his smile flicker. Another step and she just stopped. "Julian," she said.

"Yes?" he answered quickly. "I'm sorry. Did you want to take the suppressant with you? I suppose it's all right if you really think it's something you might need."

"No," she shook her head. "I'm fine."

"Oh," Bashir said.

She studied him, knowing the look on his face, having seen it often. The slight tip to his head, the eyes widened slightly. His carriage, neutral, placid, casual. Finally she just asked. "Julian, could we break the rules?"

His head tipped back and then forward, exhaling a thankful breath and broad grin. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Hm," Dax smiled as his fingers curled through hers, the pressure of them strong. She watched his eyes droop and his lips part before her eyes closed. It was a loving kiss. Tender, sensual, long, his voice cloudy when he ordered the computer to place her on unavailable status.

_"Commander Dax is currently unavailable," the computer rejected the request as a duplication. Bashir blinked at his com badge._

"Now, why didn't I think of that?" Dax teased his surprise.

"Very funny," he said. "Computer? Amend Commander Dax's status to place her and Cadet Nog on sick roll until notified. Under no circumstances are either of them to be disturbed until released."

"Was that wise?" Dax wondered, watching him transfer her screening to the _Defiant's medical bank._

"We'll find out. Come on."

He picked the wrong cabin, the bunks on the opposite wall than the quarters they had been in but that was all right, he picked the right cabin next. Atmosphere mattering more than the cabin arrangement in this instance the arrangement was very much a part of it. He dropped her hand only for the moment it took to slip his jumpsuit off his shoulders and toss his T-shirt aside. Dax glanced from his naked chest to his hands pressing tightly against hers, their fingers entwining.

"I believe this is where we were," Bashir agreed.

It was a loving union, silent except for their breathing, reminiscent of the first time in its construction and focus to show love, promote it, consummating their relationship that had risen a level. Their discussion a result, not the cause of the elevation that had actually occurred early the morning before when confronted with the prospect of being revealed they faced it without fear or question. They were lovers in love, any resemblance to an affair, superficial.

Deliberate, determined, involved, Bashir was aware of almost welcoming some new opportunity to share that truth and understanding, thinking about it randomly throughout the night. Wondering, occasionally wanting someone to walk through the door and discover them. No one did. Not at any point to find them wrapped in passion, or during the time they were bold enough to fall asleep for a short while. He woke up under the weight of her across his chest. She woke up under the pressure of his kiss. An hour later he was scooping up their clothes and her hand, poking his head out the door for a quick look up and down the corridor before scooting for the shower to drop the cargo in a heap on the floor and themselves back in each other's arms.

There were two showers, as noticed earlier, to accommodate the eight crew, both sonic, maximum programmable time: ten minutes at ten minute intervals, efficiency in crew management, water consumption, storage, and recycling, on the minds of Starfleet engineers rather the romantic. That was all right. Lacking the stimulus of warm, constructed rain, the limited time, time was irrelevant after the first few minutes provided the door did not fling itself open at the maximum allowable twenty minutes, which it did not. He activated the maximum time, an hour later activating it again. The sanitizing vaporless wash refreshing and invigorating, her matted, snarled hair softening under his hand in moments rather than dripping wet.

Dax relaxed comfortable in his strength she had noticed in Benjamin's office and now felt in his arms around her. The maturity. The newfound serenity in the hand smoothing her hair as she rested against his shoulder. She smiled. "Two rules broken in one night?"

"Why not?" his whisper breathed in her ear. "Seemed a perfect way to dispel any lingering doubts I'm any less on fire for you."

"No doubts," she shook her head.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Me, too," he kissed the trail of spots along her cheek line.   
  


CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

It was earlier than he thought it was; 06:21:05 when they sat in the small, utilitarian commissary, gazing at each other over their cups of tea like lovers do, a prevailing tranquility about them and in the air around them. The night, time spent together, seeming to have been much longer than it actually was, five hours, that was all. Bashir sipped his tea, knowing he was sitting with the ultimate in partners. His wife. His mate. He gave it a year or thereabouts before he actually asked her, also knowing he'd probably be tempted to from time to time especially during quiet moments like these. "What time is duty call?" he wondered.

"0700," Dax smiled.

Bashir nodded, thinking of their schedule date for 1900. "Twelve hour shifts then."

  


"Yes," Dax said. "On the bridge, anyway, for Rom, Nog and I. The Chief also, if he wants to; he may. Between whatever he and Rom might need to do to cover engineering."

"And Keiko," Bashir completed for her.

"Yes," Dax smiled.

"Can't be any easier than it's ever been for Miles," Bashir surmised. "Especially now since Keiko's only just returned."

"And leaving again," Dax said. "They'll work it out." She actually had a great deal of faith in the unit Miles and Keiko O'Brien.

"Oh, yes. Definitely," Bashir agreed. "Perhaps not in the same way others might, but they'll work it out their way, and that's what really matters."

"I imagine it does," Dax accepted with another soft smile. "Worf has second bridge duty; eighteen hours."

Bashir's sheepish grin dropped briefly to his tea. "I was trying not to ask that."

"I know," she nodded.

He laughed quietly. "Yes, all right, you win. No more rules."

"Only what's common sense," she agreed.

"Fair enough…and, well, I suppose we can make a reasonably early night of it; 23-24 hundred? Especially for those of you who have to back on duty at 0-seven."

"Either or," Dax imagined.

"My cabin?" Bashir asked. "Not here, darling. It was wonderful."

"But very close confines," she understood.

"Close enough," he smiled. "Particularly if Jake, or Keiko, or even Nog do want to remain in the lab for a while. In all honesty, it's not going to be as simple as I thought. You were right."

"It's not the _Defiant," she said._

"With three additional crew members to consider, not only Kira. Still, I hope you don't mind if I still say we'll work it out."

"No, I don't mind."

"Is that a yes then?"

"Yes, I'll be there," she promised.

"So will I. By twenty-four. With bells on."

"Bells?" she laughed.

"An expression," he leaned across the small table with a stroke for her neatly braided hair. "If I have a fantasy it's not only to be with you every night, it's to be with you like this every morning."

"Sounds like a nice one."

"Definitely," he kissed her.

"Last of the rules?" she asked, listening to his breath, feeling it on her face, the same as he could feel hers.

"Generally speaking. Never kept too much to that one anyway."

"No," she said.

"Have to remember that when we get back to the station."

"The station," Dax savored. "What's at the station?"

Bashir bit back a silly giggle. "Do you know I went so far as to swear an oath to myself that I would never even kiss you in my office? Finding the idea not only derelict and so utterly beneath us, but debauched?"

She thought about that. "Which one of us needs to see a counselor?"

"I do," Bashir laughed. "Come on," he stood up with their tea and a flick of his head forward to the Infirmary suite. "Time to see about putting you officially back on duty."

"Um, hm," Dax obligingly fell in step. "I'm fine. You just want to play."

"Of course, I want to play. It's all quite impressive. You know I'm going to be hounding the Captain and the Chief, not only to keep her, but for an entire upgrade. Infirmary, surgical suites, ICU, lab, everything," he set their tea down on the medical console, securing his tricorder. "I'm five years post-modern except for an occasional patch. With that Cardassian matrix as much a dinosaur as the Ark by this time."

"Oh, I know," Dax settled on one of the two streamline examination beds with a nod for the array of overhead clusters that basically meant he could turn the entire Infirmary into an expanded surgical theater or ICU, or whatever else he cared to do. For their usage, apart from Nadya, that probably translated into petitioning Anar to contain the mummy aboard the runabout throughout the mission. "It really is extremely impressive. The UFP must have been desperate to appease Shakaar for Lange."

"With Shakaar as desperate to appease Captain Sisko."

"Oh, yes," Dax laughed. "Can we include the science labs in your fantasy?"

"Which one?" he looked up from her screening with a wink.

"Clever," she took the tricorder away from him with that coy wrinkling of her nose he absolutely loved. The results of her screening showing her very near ninety-six percent.

"Almost perfect," Bashir approved. "Can I talk you into breakfast yet? Papalla juice? Anything?"

Dax smiled. "I think I'd rather know what happened with Alexis Ortiz."

Bashir's mouth twisted, his head dipping again with his blushing grin. "One of those questions you've been trying not to ask?"

"Hm…" Dax considered. "Possibly. She's extremely forward for a Human."

"Aggressive, I would say," Bashir agreed. "That's interesting though. I know I hadn't thought of her approaching you. Can't imagine why she would; should I?" he asked. 

"You," Dax agreed.

"Basis for your question," Bashir nodded. "And, well, that's part of it, I suppose. Though in my reevaluation of what the actual trouble was -- my trouble. Captain Sisko's words and advice when he promptly handed the issue of discharge back to me. In fairness I had to agree I couldn't say I wasn't overreacting to her personal attention, if only because I questioned myself of that at the time. Ultimately however, all of that was really irrelevant because the facts remain. She did speak grossly out of turn during the cardiac replacement, fully aware no general anesthesia penetrates to the subconscious, leaving the patient's psyche utterly vulnerable; or she should be aware of this, which obviously she is, as obviously it didn't concern her; she didn't care.

"As far as her earlier handling of the same patient," he said, "I have no proof she actually ignored him, but I do know Quark was more attuned to his surroundings to realize something was very wrong and when he attempted to secure medical attention on the man's behalf, she did, in fact, dismiss him without bothering to investigate. Thoroughly out of the question. At that time it hardly mattered who the patient was, whether he was intoxicated, or what he was, including the party responsible for causing the entire ruckus. Which, in due respect to the man, he hardly was. He wasn't even involved. Having entered the Infirmary at some point after the group from Quark's; as I said, neither here nor there," he smiled at her beautiful face. "No more than my feeling she was putting me in a personally awkward position, which she was. I discharged her. Relieved her of her duties, yes, absolutely, with a full report to Starfleet Medical, along with my recommendations she be placed on probation prior to, and hopefully after, a peer review. Sanctioned, and be required to repeat a rudimentary class or two, whether someone considers that overly harsh of me or not. I'm not even going to be here to supervise her six-week internship. Hardly up to returning to God knows what because I failed to respond to a situation that I wouldn't begin to tolerate if I were here. I'll take my chances she files some ludicrous complaint against me. To put it bluntly, the burden of proof is on her. I did not call her a bitch. Michelle was there and knows exactly what I said. I did deem her a witch, but that was not to her, it was simply said; out into the air. A verbal release of the frustration and anger I felt; furious at the level of insubordination, that she would interrupt my reprimand and invite me for some breakfast date.

"I'm sorry," he did not apologize. "Upon calming down at Captain Sisko's advice, and inquiring into what had actually transpired between her and Quark and my patient, I was even angrier and concerned -- for the welfare of my patients and my Kingdom," he smiled again. His weight balanced on his knuckles propped on the examining bed like some chimpanzee as he stood in front of her, speaking softly, feeling calm, serene, as he had begun feeling at some point earlier in the middle of the night.

"I'd like to talk about you for a moment, if we can," he said. "Not about Ortiz, but about traumatic stress syndrome, which is my diagnosis, yes. You exhibit some rather classic clinical symptoms associated with an abused adult. Most specifically, apart from the physical injuries, is a willingness to remain in the situation. That is where the issue of a concern over suicide emerges, whether or not you are actually fantasizing about committing suicide at this time."

"I'm not," Dax replied, also calm, listening.

"Good," Bashir said. "I'd also like to explain something. Whether or not ideas of culture, or cultural practices are relevant, they are not applicable. What I mean is, the same as the Articles of Federation offer a guideline in acceptable social or governmental behavior, regardless of what the individual world may deem their structure or right, so does the medical community. The fact that the abuse within your relationship with Worf does not extend beyond your sexual relations, in no way precludes, or prohibits, that area of your life from being determined to be sadomasochistic, and that is unacceptable.

"The fact," he said, "that you are the individual who is being invited, or encouraged to participate in a practice otherwise foreign to you, is what causes you to be determined the victim, or enabler, and Mister Worf to be determined the promoter or perpetrator. No, you aren't the one in control, nor do you have the power to say no without assistance. If you were, or if you had, you would have said no the very first time. To Worf, or to Curzon, which is why I feel the root of the trouble goes much deeper than Mister Worf, to an issue of control.

"What I can do then," he said, "what I have to do, for your sake, Mister Worf's, and, yes, my own, is stop subjectively viewing Worf as the ultimate evil, and begin objectively viewing him from the perspective of a doctor. Without getting into a debate on the Klingon culture, I can tell you, yes, Mister Worf also requires intervention and intensive psychological counseling and therapy, in fact, should be required to enroll in a structured program if he wishes to remain within the organization of Starfleet. It's utterly ludicrous to think that what prohibits a world from being a member of the UFP would in turn be somehow acceptable on an individual basis; which, I repeat, it isn't. 

"As, in fact," he said, "I should be having this conversation with the two of you. I can't. Not at this point. However, emphatically, that is my goal. In the meantime, I am in love with you, and that magnifies everything. I need to be able to be confident, never mind anyone else, that any professional association I have with Worf is strictly professional. Not some form of punishment, or revenge, or power that I can relieve him of his duties above and beyond Captain Sisko, because he is hurting the woman I love. Mated, to the woman I love.

"A marked concern of mine," he said, "in that, regardless of how my culture views extramarital relationships, or how your culture views the same, it is vehemently unacceptable within Mister Worf's culture. A fact that causes an immediate risk of the abuse or violence expanding from its restricted area and exploding in your life. With the accompanying fact, that now, regardless of what Federation laws may read, Mister Worf is well within his cultural rights to kill you.

"Out of the question," he reiterated again what had been said before. "When it is time to inform Worf of our relationship, ideally, I would like for the two of us to first conference with Captain Sisko, allowing him the opportunity to express how he feels Worf should be advised. Respecting how apart from any concern for retaliation or violence, the potential of general disruption to the flow and unity of his staff would also have to concern Captain Sisko immensely.

"Right now," he said, "what I would like for us to do is focus our attention on enrolling you in a structured counseling program. Certainly, as your doctor, I would want to be initially involved in selecting the appropriate person to manage your case, but you also have to be completely comfortable with the choice. Feeling confident and free to talk about whatever you care to talk about, and that includes us, or me, if you so desire. Therefore, the best way I feel for us to find the right counselor is for us to conduct the interviews together. Reserving releasing any details other than a necessary base history, and even who you are, until personal introductions have been made, and you say yes, this is the one. Will you agree to participate in such a program?"

"Yes, I'll participate," Dax said honestly.

"Good," Bashir was pleased.

"I also like the idea of talking with Benjamin first," she agreed. "Maybe not for the same reasons as you."

"My reasons are stress," Bashir assured. "You're under enough stress. Surely the addition of our relationship has brought its own. Something your counselor may tell you, and certainly me."

"Maybe," Dax said. "But it was also stressful before, simply different."

"Sounds like my outlook," Bashir smiled. "How are you around Worf, if I may ask?"

"Good question," Dax laughed. "And, well, let me see…I would say somewhat less awkward than I would have thought Jadzia would have been, and somewhat more awkward than Dax normally is."

"And which of you is talking?" Bashir verified good-naturedly.

"Both," Dax smiled. "All. Jadzia. Dax. Which is who I am. Physically, emotionally and intellectually. With all of who Jadzia is and was and all of who Dax is and was brought together; joined. I can't be separated, that's very true. My host body will die, as I might die as well. Either way there will never be another Jadzia-Dax again, anymore than there would be another Julian Bashir. Something," she admitted, "I need to explore and make sure I understand fully before attempting to point it out to anyone else."

"You did fine," Bashir assured.

"And I have an idea some are just confused by the external, Julian," she said. "Ignoring it for fear of focusing on it and cheating Dax out of his rightful acknowledgment and inadvertently end up cheating Jadzia."

"That would be a classic humanoid response when confronted with the extraordinary, such as your species," Bashir agreed. "What can't be, or isn't understood, is nevertheless categorized or divided, hopefully in an effort to understand, rather than destroy, either way forgetting the whole is greater than the sum total of its parts."

"Don't do the opposite?" Dax requested.

"Got it," he promised. "No I won't focus only on Jadzia, forgetting Dax, despite this primal creature inside of me who loves the external you madly, I love you. Insisting I understand because you're right. I'm also a collection of intellect, emotion, and experiences. Simply without the physical symbiont relationship and guidance of Dax. Our internal connection to ourselves and the universe is intangible; we call it soul. Romantics and scientists alike believing it lives on beyond the host body, either in another host, through our children, or as a developed advanced lifeform. Living, some would like to think for eternity; we've yet to agree which, if any or all are actually right," he finished with a grin. "Or if it's all just folklore."

Dax nodded. "I can see where it might be a little difficult for you to decide."

"Quite," Bashir laughed. "I'm not sure the choices could be anymore diverse. Getting back to the choices of a counselor, while we're still aboard the _Defiant, I can secure recommendations from the medical banks. Once we're on the planet I can contact Rebecca Sorge for her recommendations from the runabout if Anar really doesn't have the communications equipment."_

"He has to," Dax believed. 

"Anon Dukat's transport," Bashir agreed. "That's what I'm hoping."

"Yes," Dax said. "However, we are on a communications lockout."

"I'll make it an exchange," Bashir offered. "This way Anar can have an update on Janice's status."

"He can probably get that any time he chooses. I'm sure all of that was arranged before he left the _Tir."___

"My point," Bashir assured. "Yes, he can, and there's no way we can stop him, so really, what does a communications lockout actually mean? Meanwhile we're here for six weeks. It will take at least that long to arrange for any appropriate candidates to come to the station to meet you. I'd like to have all of that in place by the time we're home rather than waiting until then to begin our search, particularly since the interview process is going to add even more time before you begin actual counseling."

"Yes, all right," Dax said.

"Good," Bashir said. "It's not an attempt to intimidate you, simply stressing something you need."

"No, I know that," Dax nodded. "I'm not intimidated."

"Good," Bashir said again. "Ideally I'd like it to be Rebecca Sorge, however, I'm not willing to wait the six months for her to return from Cardassia Prime, if she plans to return. In the meantime there has to be someone else out there, and you can practice with me in the interim."

"Hm," Dax smiled. "Why is it I just can't counsel with you again?"

His lips touched hers lightly. "That's why. Long term it would be counter- productive."

"Got it," Dax said.

"Excellent. Now what about that idea of breakfast?"

"Maybe in a couple of hours," she hopped down with a laugh to have a critical look over the modifications the Chief had made to the science station in compliance with Anar's adamant refusal to allow any planetary surveys. Foolish because they also could have assisted him in a better understanding of the area and land they were attempting to cultivate. As it was now the only offering they could make was a combined opinion of hers and Keiko's.

"All right," Bashir sighed. "But I insist that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach is called hunger."

His arm encircled her waist and she felt the light burst from a hypospray. "Nutritional supplement," he offered before she asked. "Everything that cup of tea of yours doesn't have."

"Something to do with that lightheaded feeling can no longer be attributed to vertigo."

"Absolutely," he settled back against the console with a sympathetic smile for the panels. "I believe the Chief also disabled many of the arrays."

"I'm sure he did. He's hiding something."

"Anar?"

"Yes. It's more than an environmental concern."

"Or simply wishing to be disagreeable," Bashir nodded. "Well, we've suspected that all along as far as my understanding."

Yes. But now she knew. Face to face with what they could do, and could not do simply because they were not allowed to, she knew.

"Any idea what really?" Bashir asked.

"No," Dax admitted.

"Beyond some form of weaponry or defense," Bashir guessed.

"Well, that, yes," she agreed. "Maybe it's Klingon. I don't know. Some of the artifacts…"

"If not some of the furnishings," Bashir nodded, "appear to be distinctly Klingon in origin."

"Yes."

"An actual downed Bird-of-Prey?" Bashir shrugged. "Recently? Rather than a collection of trophies secured over the years? Anar's hints and our theories include they had the power and numbers at one point. Nevertheless, it seems a bit odd to display on one hand what you're attempting to hide on the other. Not that it couldn't have serious ramifications if you're right. Particularly if there was some sort of new or improved technology aboard that no else knew about; yet." He took her hand, drawing her away from the science console to his adjacent medical. "On a far lighter note, you'll be pleased and surprised to know for all my ignoring Janice's samples…"

"You actually did begin an analysis?"

"Well, I created a file," he grinned. "But, no," he said as she laughed, "I did transfer all your logs to the _Defiant -- "_

"So did I."

"I know. I deleted them and incorporated them with my file. We're now linked and all set to begin. Simple matter of transferring the file to these data banks…Which we can do right now…" he accessed the log. "But wait before you applaud, because there's more…"

"Nadya," Dax said as the genetic chain appeared on screen in a spiraling figure-8, rotating and multiplying as the chain arced out, and the data began to stream across the display.

"Yes," Bashir said excitedly.

"Are these your simulations?"

"It's everything. Have a seat," he invited. "Interestingly enough as convinced as I was Sian was probably not her biological father, I'm now not as sure the lacking genetic markers couldn't be explained by manipulation -- certainly engineering is a plausible consideration at this level, the corrosion is obviously quite extensive. However, if one considers the use of hybridomas to rapidly produce monoclonal antibodies in an effort to combat the effects of the gamma radiation, and that of a recombinant technique to cause the desired gene to reproduce itself in an attempt to stimulate a polymerase chain reaction -- which, unto itself, could explain the number of DNA fragments…And," he said, suddenly interrupting himself, "admittedly I just thought of this, quite possibly the basic principle Janice employed in her experiments."

"Tissue regeneration," Dax said.

"Controlled replication," Bashir said. "Extraordinarily difficult to achieve, to the contrary, the very nature of topical application fairly guarantees unequal distribution, particularly under the conditions she was having to work under -- by hand, for God's sake. As would the natural absorption into the blood stream potentially wreak havoc with any other ongoing therapies or treatments…" He sat down enthusiastically next to her. 

"The Rigelian antidote," she said.

"Yes. That's why the astoundingly high levels of antibodies."

"And why Dukat and his troop would even become infected," Dax said, beginning to think as rapidly as he was.

"Because Janice didn't administer the serum immediately, which of course, she wouldn't. Not until she absolutely had to."

"Due to their injuries," Dax said. 

"Open wounds," Bashir assured. "Magnifying the absorption rate…As there are likely additional factors to consider. Such as why the use of the compound at all."

"Plasma burns," Dax said.

"Precisely. The ointment providing heat extraction rather than simply acting as a suppressant, invaluable in the treatment of burns -- what I had actually been considering as the most feasible explanation."

"Yes," Dax agreed.

"And also," Bashir grinned at her, "the rapid growth of bacterium in some of the samples; hybridomas -- potentially naturally forming. This is utterly fantastic. Taken to the farthest reachings…"

"Or at least as far as the grotto and Lange's mummy?"

"Yes," Bashir said. "Quite possibly offering the explanation as to why the lack of natural deterioration in the corpse. Upon death, the process slowed, not halted entirely, manifesting itself in preservation, with only the source of the phenomenon waiting to be defined. Genetic engineering, quite possibly."

"But also quite possibly stemming from something as natural as diet or the environment," Dax nodded. "To varying degrees, the effects wouldn't be something we haven't seen before. Induced, as with the Genesis experiments of the past century, but also in its natural state."

"Yes," Bashir said. "The Gamma Quadrant where Kai Opaka was killed and rejuvenated. The residents of the world quite literally slaves to their environment."

"If they wish to live," Dax considered thoughtfully. "That would explain not only Anar's concerns about environmental contamination, but also what effects any contamination might have on Nadya's chances for survival, particularly if the source of the phenomenon is natural. With determining the source uppermost to both Anar and Lange, quite possibly each for their own reasons initially or possibly not. Lange's involvement with Nadya's health issues were apparently from the time of her arrival, with the subsequent discovery of the mummy suggesting limitless potential."

"Contamination would definitely be one of my concerns," Bashir assured. "Including the potential for a genetically altered organism disrupting the planet's ecosystem."

"I think you're probably harmless enough."

Bashir paused in his critical analysis. Dax smiled, studying the display, "As I think, even if we were to determine Nadya is in her own way dependent upon her environment, it's something Anar can accept. Possibly contributing to why he is adamant about her not leaving Dyaan IX. Hesitant in you assuming treatment of her and inadvertently creating some conflict between your therapies or Lange's, already at best experimental, or the natural, because in all honesty he doesn't know…and he wants to know first, if he can. With the greatest fear probably being that for all the miraculous indications, Nadya's potential is limited regardless."

"Utterly fantastic," Bashir said again.

"Yes," Dax agreed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It was 0618, the bridge quiet under the low hum of her systems, a mood indicative and inducing. Worf verified the time silently, the thick, smooth pads of his fingers drumming a dull, monotonous rhythm on the helm console.

"You're setting yourself up to fail." The Chief's voice penetrated his divided concentration. Worf looked up and over to him.

"_Hello," O'Brien said to Worf sitting there looking at him like he was speaking Klingonese, which admittedly maybe he should try. "I'm telling you she's upset; I told you this."_

He did. He left Dax at the turbolift to make fast tracks to the bridge to bring her point to Worf's _and Kira's attention, who could wait five minutes while he took two to explain it to Worf who finally got it, maybe yes, apparently no._

  


"What does she have to do?" O'Brien asked. "_Dissolve into tears for you to realize that? __Talk to her -- not now!" he groaned with Worf's flickering frown toward the exit. "Later. Take a break together. An hour. Even a half an hour. When she comes on duty; 0700."_

"0600," Worf corrected. "Commander Dax is scheduled to resume duty at 0600."

"I thought Kira said 0700?" O'Brien frowned across to Rom having a ball playing assistant Ops manager.

"Um, yup," Rom nodded. "06, 0700, that's what Major Kira said."

"Okay, whatever," O'Brien waved. "_Between 0600, 0700, she'll be here -- __early," he assured Worf. "If I know her, and I do know her. She's like this one, Kira. They love this stuff. Short staff, red alerts, disaster modes, twenty, thirty hours, they don't care. Couple hours' break they're bored and want right back in the action; so take advantage of it, all right? When she comes on, take her aside, to the commissary, get her a cup of coffee, she's not going to say __no. It's what she wants you to do. None of this grabbing at her arm in the middle of the bridge." _

He stood up with a shake of his head. "What the heck is the matter with you? Keiko would knock my head off my shoulders if I ever did that to her. You're reacting. She's reacting. Stop reacting. I told you before.It's not what, it's not where, it's _how you do it. Understand me?"_

"Yes," Worf sighed.

"Okay." O'Brien gave him a supportive slap on the back and a nod of accomplishment to Rom. "Marriage is as hard as you make it out to be, and it's already not easy, so just do it; right. Do it right…like you," he wandered over to Rom with a chuckle.

"Um…" Rom glanced toward navigation.

"No, that's okay, you can stay, just checking out a few things. Worf can handle it."

"Okeydokey," Rom said. "But…um…you know you're wrong."

"Oh, yeah? About what?"

"Marriage," Rom nodded briskly. "Marriage is great; I love it."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "Ask your wife lately? For that matter, _seen your wife lately? Know where she is?"_

"Um…yup," Rom grinned. "Your place. Watching the kids until Chief O'Brien comes home. That's where Leeta is. Didn't go back to Bajor, nope, didn't do that. Didn't go to Cardassia where she'd rather live with Janice and Anon. Nope, didn't do that either. Went to your place because…well, where else is she going to go? Not to the bar. Mad at Quark, too.Captain Sisko. Odo. Lots of people. Not mad at the kids, so she'll go play with them for a week. Makes sense to me."

"Check the sensors or something," O'Brien suggested. "See who we have out there."

"Okeydokey," Rom said. "But that's where Leeta is; yup. That's where she is."

"Nog told him," O'Brien sat back down at navigation with assurance for Worf. "Trust me, he didn't know. Nog told him." 

Worf huffed. "It is 6:23."

"Yeah? So? What are you saying? You want to meet her instead of waiting for her to come on?"

"Yes," Worf decided. "Yes, I am saying that."

"So go," O'Brien shrugged. "It's okay, go on. I can handle it. You'd be gone if she were here, so just go."

"Thank you," Worf said.

He left. O'Brien shook his head again, transferring full control of Conn to his console. "Like talking to a wall."

"Big one," Rom put in.

"Oh, yeah," O'Brien assured. "And a thick one."

She was not in their quarters, though she had been there. Worf picked up the music tapes dropped on the floor beside the open duffel, fingering them in his large hand. Her smell, a sour one of sickness, was stale and probably imaginary, the bunks were untouched. She had not been there long. Curiosity had him wondering what she wanted in the duffel. Concern had him hearing the Chief's voice with its advice about doing things right or wrong. Were the tapes wrong? 

"They are tapes," Worf spoke out loud, emphatic and decisive. Tired of the Chief's confusing analogies, there was a limit to his patience, too, not only Dax's. This matter, which he could not explain, had gone on long enough. He activated his com badge. "Location of Commander Dax."

The computer responded with her familiar answer for an unfamiliar reason. _"Commander Dax is currently on the sick roster and cannot be disturbed. Please state the nature of the emergency."_

_Worf fumed. "That is ridiculous. We are currently at one half staff. I am the First Officer of the __Defiant, acting Commander. I have not been advised of any crew illnesses or injuries. When was Commander Dax placed on the sick roster, by whose orders?"_

_"Checking…Commander Dax was placed on sick status at 0128:29 by Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Bashir. Presently the sick roll includes Commander Dax and Cadet Nog, also placed on sick status at 0128:29 with the addendum Cadet Nog was relieved of duty as Assistant Operations Manager due to illness by his acting Supervisor, Chief Engineer O'Brien at 1925:05. There are no additional crew or passenger listings at this time._

_"Crew Management protocol," the computer continued in response to Worf's complaint, __"allows for the acting medical officer to place off-duty personnel on infirmed or injured status at their discretion without mandatory notification of the Officer-In-Charge of Crew Management and disbursement except in the instances of Yellow or Red Alert. The Officer-In-Charge is Major Kira Nerys. The status of all crew members currently listed on the sick roll is scheduled for review at 0700 with required notification of the Officer-In-Charge if duty call is anticipated to be affected…Duty call for Commander Dax and Cadet Nog is recorded to be scheduled for 0700. Do you wish an additional notification of crew status to be forwarded to you following medical release or review?"_

"Commander Dax is my wife," Worf retorted, exiting the cabin with a growl. "I, as her husband, should have been notified." 

_"Denied," the computer refused. __"It is a Class One Offense for any medical personnel to reveal, discuss, or otherwise reference a patient's status or condition with any person or device outside of what is necessary for appropriate medical care without the patient's expressed permission. In the event of critical, or life-threatening injury or illness, or in the event of a patient's passing, it is the exclusive and sole authority and right of the Chief Medical Officer to determine when notification of immediate family members is appropriate following any necessary or required notification of the Commanding Officer…"_

"I am the Commanding Officer," Worf halted in the corridor. "To repeat, we are at one half crew. As First Officer of the _Defiant I am to be aware of crew status at all times."_

_"Denied," the computer sorted through the request finding its basis suspicious and irrelevant, chastising him. __"Commander Dax's marital status is not germane to her performance of duty. Persistent or further inquiries under this basis are inappropriate and considered anomalous activity by definition of abuse or attempted abuse of right and privilege, a Class One Offense. As Commanding Officer of the Defiant, solely, you have been notified of crew status. At all and any time the Chief Medical Officer may deny notification under these guidelines. As at all and any time it is the exclusive right of the Chief Medical Officer to supercede or remove a Commanding, superior, or any officer or crew member from duty as medically unfit for duty. Potential for harm of self or any officer or crew is qualified as medically unfit. As is violation or attempted violation of any medical code, ethic, or canon, qualified as harm or potential for harm -- "_

"bljatlh 'e' ylmev!" Worf barked, ordering the computer to shut up, turning to face the end of the corridor and its two looming alternatives other than the turbolift; the toilet and Bashir's assigned quarters.

The toilet and adjoining shower were open, available and empty and he was facing the door to Bashir's cabin, staring at it. Trying to stare through it, which was impossible. Listen, to what was only unsatisfying silence. 

"Location of Doctor Bashir," his voice rang out.

_"Doctor Bashir is currently unavailable…" the computer began her refrain. ___

"petaQ!" Worf reared with a ferocious curse, his hands slamming into the door, prepared to rip it open if Bashir or the computer refused; he needed neither's permission. The door opened immediately, unlocked and interpreting the striking blow as a request for admittance. The cabin was empty, though Bashir had at some point been there. Slept, before leaving in a hurry, the state of the quarters suggested with its careless scatter of articles and disheveled cot.

Worf stepped back confused by the information before his anger reasserted itself and he whirled for the turbolift, from there the _Defiant's Infirmary that was as empty, quiet and dark. Neither Dax nor Nog guests of the modest patient ward, nor Bashir whose office was also vacant. Worf gripped the edge of the console, sputtering his fury aloud. "I demand to know the whereabouts of Commander Dax."_

_"Denied," the computer reminded. __"Commander Dax is unavailable except in the instance of emergency or Alert until 0700 duty call as specified by the Chief Medical Officer and cannot be overridden without cause. The current operating status of the Defiant is normal as specified by the Commanding Officer."_

"I am the Commanding Officer!" Worf thundered. "Do not force me to order an Alert status!"

_"Checking and locating…" the computer agreed. __"Commander Dax is aboard the Defiant and will be available for 0700 duty.A review of all systems, operations, and data fails to detect any potentially critical situations. If knowledge or belief of unidentified threat or suspicion of threat is due to an unknown or Alien entity or situation you are required to issue an order for Alert readiness in anticipation of potential or actual imminent crises. Do you wish Alert status to be initiated?"_

Worf was already out the door, cursing, sputtering and threatening the computer with deactivation as he pounded for the turbolift and…where? He had no idea. The possibilities seemed endless, the twenty minutes until Jadzia's required appearance on the bridge an impossible time to wait. The door to the turbolift opened to the unexpected sight of Nog and Jake aboard. The two of them as startled as Worf, more so to find themselves suddenly under the imposing glowering scowl of who was their friend and at the moment looked only extremely large, extremely angry, and extremely Klingon.In unison they took an unconscious wary step back, Worf not helping with his verbal attack of Nog.

"You are well," he challenged.

"As in not sick?" Jake ventured hesitantly when Nog failed to respond.

Nog groaned in his excited chatter. "I think I got that much!" It was the answer he was having a little trouble with, if Worf wanted an answer. Did he want an answer? If so, was there a particular answer he wanted? Anyone's guess was as good as Nog's as he stared from Worf's piercing eyes burning down on top of him to Worf's heavily breathing abdomen looking him dead in the face. 

"Beats me," Nog finally decided with a sigh, opting to embrace his Uncle Quark's teachings and straddle the broad middle between committing to a firm yes, or a firm no. "Guess so. Kind of. Maybe."

Worf entered the turbolift with a dissatisfied growl for the answer that was not an answer. "Where are we going?"

Nog hesitated. "You want to answer that?" he checked with Jake.

"The commissary?" Jake proposed in the form of a question open to suggestions for all the clout he had on his side, but Nog didn't fault him. There was just something about being locked up in a turbolift with a Klingon before his morning coffee that made facts like being the son of Captain Sisko irrelevant.

"Will you knock it off with who I am?" Jake answered Nog's mutter somewhat annoyed.

"Can't," Nog assured. "It's too important to me."

"Oh yeah?" Jake said. "Is that why you're friends with me?"

"At the moment?" Nog answered honestly. "Yes."

"Fine," Jake folded his arms.

"Or at least why I'm glad I'm friends with you," Nog agreed. "I'm only kidding."

"Whatever," Jake said.

"I am," Nog insisted. "So's he."

"Yes," Jake nodded. "Worf's only kidding."

"Uh, huh," Nog said. "And what did we say he was kidding about?"

"I don't know," Jake sighed.

"That makes two of us," Nog assured. "Okay. Here's what we do. I'll tackle the middle of him, you grab him somewhere around the top."

Jake looked at him.

"You're right," Nog nodded. "It didn't work with Leeta, it's not going to work with Worf."

"I just want a cup of coffee," Jake said.

Nog was with him. "Sounds like a plan to me."

They ogled Worf.

"Any day now," Nog shifted from one foot to the other.

"Yeah, no kidding," Jake agreed.

"Commissary," Worf digested. It was an answer and a suggestion that made sense. Beyond the Chief's idea that he breakfast with his wife in the commissary as some form of exercise in improving communication between them, it was entirely possible Dax was already in the commissary. Her overnight medical leave simply set to expire at her time of duty rotation without requiring formal clearance or physical exam unless she maintained some complaint. This apparently the case with Nog who was en route to the commissary himself, not the Infirmary. What continued not to make sense was Dax's steadfast avoidance of her husband during her off-duty hours and Bashir's apparent willingness to support her in this choice. 

Worf ogled Nog ogling him. He had no actual evidence Bashir was involved in Dax's previous decisions to wall herself away from him and truly everyone with her orders for the computer to place her as unavailable, but he had it this time. The orders were Bashir's more than an hour after Dax left the bridge, following her contact of Bashir that he answered. Leaving his quarters to meet her or escort her somewhere other than her quarters or the Infirmary where she remained through the night while Bashir also did not return to his quarters but likewise spent his time elsewhere. It was not the Infirmary, though violently sick himself when he left the bridge at 19:10. The _Defiant's lounge was possible, Worf supposed, though finding the choice as odd as the circumstances. The commissary was unlikely, though made sense by this point in time._

"Yes," he nodded stiffly to Nog and Jake. "The commissary is acceptable."

The lift engaged to their relief and his disappointment moments later. Neither Dax nor Bashir were in the commissary. Kira and Keiko O'Brien were, involved in animated mirth as they sat at one of the tables with their mugs of raktajino, plate of half-eaten pastries and assortment of data padds. Kira clutching one of the padds to her chest, begging to be allowed to keep it, her eyes dancing in rare, uncharacteristic joy while Keiko's head bobbed with reassuring proud laughter that she knew Kira would want that copy in particular and that it was hers, yes, definitely. Worf halted in the doorway with a huff.

"Oh, brother, here we go again," Nog groaned behind him to Jake. "You know, some people really make better doors than others."

"Yes, they do," Jake shushed him. "Just, come on, come on."

They squeezed and pardoned their way around Worf who never moved, but also never said anything like "Stop. Halt. Back in line, infidel targs." Leaving them free to make a run for the replicators, Jake with a shake of his head for Worf who was beyond him, to where Kira's and Keiko's laughter he understood.

"Pictures of the kids," he grinned at Nog, impatiently shoving his way in front of him.

"Whatever," Nog was disinterested in both. "Come on, hurry up or get out of the way. I've got ten minutes if I'm lucky."

"You've got more than that."

"Yeah, okay, fifteen to your all day," Nog hammered in his order for coffee and two Aldorian waffles. 

"No, I don't have all day," Jake laughed with a nod for Nog's lavish plate of rolled chocolate crepes, soft and warm and oozing berries and sweet cheese icing. "That's an idea."

"Get your own," Nog threatened.

"I am," Jake assured. "I am."

Worf regrouped his annoyance bearing down on Kira and Keiko celebrating their reunion with the insistent announcement, "I am looking for Commander Dax."

Keiko paused in collecting up her photo souvenirs of Earth and the two children,Kira paused halfway through taking a swallow of her coffee, the two of them looking back at him mystified.

Worf huffed again. "Commander Dax is forty-five minutes late for her duty call of 0600…"

"0600?" Keiko interjected with a frown, about to apologize to Kira for making her late.

"No," Kira waved Worf's version of reality aside. "0700."

Worf huffed. "You requested duty call be for 0600."

"No, I didn't," Kira said. "I know what time I ordered duty call; check the schedule."

"I am aware the schedule is recorded to be 0700," Worf agreed testily. "That is not the issue. Commander Dax specifically stated she would return to the bridge at 0600, which she has not done. My inquiry into her absence revealed her to have been placed on the sick roster at 0128:29 by Doctor Bashir, together with Cadet Nog…"

"You're still sick?" Kira turned a suspicious eye on Nog happily gorging himself. "Huh?" Nog paused in a lick of the icing dripping down his finger.

"Much better," Jake grinned.

So Kira could see. "Nog's fine," she turned back to Worf.

"That is irrelevant," he assured. "Commander Dax and Cadet Nog are on sick order."

"Dax is fine, too," Kira promised.

"Irrelevant," Worf insisted. "There has been no order of release for duty by Doctor Bashir scheduled to review the sick rooster by 0700."

"Is it seven o'clock already?" Keiko checked her watch in surprise.

"I don't know, probably," Kira checked hers also.

"06:45," Keiko nodded.

"Close enough," Kira agreed.

"They are not in the Infirmary!" Worf expired with an exasperated howl, finally securing their attention as confused and uncertain as they were initially to what he was saying. Aggravated by a puzzlement as to why he was steaming and stewing and huffing and puffing, looking like he was about to pop like some overheated conduit for…what? About what?

Kira and Keiko didn't have any idea, any more than Jake or Nog. They looked between themselves trying to figure out what they couldn't figure out. Worf took a breath, impatiently attempting to explain. "Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir are not in the Infirmary."

So? Kira almost said what came to mind first and that was Bashir was sick also. He'd review the rooster when he reviewed it, whenever he got up.She didn't say that though. Something else coming to mind that may not relieve whatever Worf was fussing about; bridge duty Kira gathered and dismissed, but would answer what he was rambling on about, the whereabouts of Bashir.

And Dax. The obvious entered Keiko's mind as well, at the same time as Kira's, the two of them chiming in chorus, "Wait a minute, I know where they are."

"I know, I know," Kira added with her characteristic mean-everything and nothing wave. She tucked her data padd under her arm, secured her coffee and remaining hunk of flaky pasty and headed for the door, Keiko accompanying her with a confidential all-knowing roll of her eyes.

"They need to start a club." Keiko had said it before and she'd say it again.

"And how," Kira agreed, actually understanding more than she cared to about what was really souring Worf's mood; Dax's assignment, to the extent that she didn't care to understand it at all. Finding she had little patience for it, the same as Keiko, for that matter Dax, for that matter Sisko who would probably prefer not to know he had an aspiring Chief O'Brien on his hands.

Rom? Rom and Leeta were a unit separate and apart from Kira's world. Generally ignoring them, tolerating them, though minimally when she couldn't, appreciating, she supposed, Rom's reliability, resourceful and useful talents in engineering and other like areas. Leeta, Kira preferred not to think about at all. Loathing her when she did, deeply resenting, despising, considering her dim-witted and extraordinarily crafty at the same time, infuriated by her audacity, desire, and ability to survive the stigma of her one-time association with Dukat that Leeta survived only because she was allowed to. The masses extending sympathy and understanding to the wide-eyed innocent who couldn't possibly be held accountable for anything she did.

"Where are they?" Jake asked Nog curiously.

"Better question," he said.

"Who cares?" Jake laughed.

"I do," Nog assured. "The guy's hypospray happy. Come near me again with one of those things, no way. It's not going to happen."

"No, you're not going to have to have any more boosters," Jake turned away to grab his Aldorian waffles out of the replicator. He opted for six of them just in case, knowing Nog's sweet tooth, but also knowing Bashir's.

"It's not just the boosters," Nog trotted along beside him as they followed Kira and Keiko out the exit for the turbolift. "It was this for my stomach, and that for my head, I really don't need to see him again."

"Hm…formality," Jake nodded, his plate catching the oozing plop of syrup and berries as he ate with his chin jutted out over the dish. "Like Nerys tried to explain to Worf…these are actually decent."

"They're out of this galaxy," Nog's finger arced out, scooping up Jake's leavings and popping it in his mouth. "I didn't even know I was on the sick rooster."

"Formality," Jake repeated. "That's what I'm saying…right or wrong?" he grinned at Kira's disapproving grimace for his breakfast even though that trail of flaky crumbs they followed to the turbolift he believed were hers?

"What?" Kira said.

"Nog doesn't have to see Doctor Bashir again, does he? Anymore than Dax does. It's all just formality."

"Yes," Kira scoffed, tired of talking about it.

"See?" Jake's elbow caught Nog in the side of his lobe.

"Ow!" Nog complained.

"Well, get your nose out of my plate," Jake suggested. "You ate yours."

"Well, get your plate out from under my nose," Nog countered. "I didn't eat anything; I swallowed. Told you, ten minutes if I'm lucky."

"About that," Jake nodded. "Where are we going?"

"Shuttlebay," Kira tossed off.

"At some point," Keiko put in.

Jake laughed, knowing what they meant. "He'll be here; Worf. He did this before; not sure why." That wasn't totally true just more or less diplomatic. Jake had an idea why, Dax's assignment. He just wasn't sure if he should say anything about it; he knew he shouldn't.

He didn't have to. Appropriate or not Nog said it for him, using a different example than what would be the classic example of the Chief. "You mean like because maybe he's mad?" Nog helped himself to cleaning up the gooshy guts of one of Jake's waffles getting ready to fall out the moment Jake picked it up. "Kind of like Kassidy having to break your father's arm before he would agree to you going?"

"She didn't break his arm," Jake hastened to reassure Kira and Keiko.

"No, but I'll bet she wanted to," Nog assured. "Just like my mother threatened to break my father's if he left."

"That…" Jake told Kira and Keiko, "is probably a little more accurate, though, no, Leeta didn't break Rom's arm either."

"No, she left, too," Nog agreed.

"To watch Molly and Kirayoshi," Jake explained to Keiko who probably already knew that.

"With Kassidy," Nog told him what he probably did not know.

Jake didn't. He blinked. "Is that where she is?"

"Yes," Nog assured. "Oh, yes -- right or wrong?" he solicited Keiko.

"Yes," Keiko nodded, admittedly fascinated the same as Kira was, though Kira was probably admittedly more fascinated with the waffles on Jake's plate that hovered, dangling temptingly under her nose when they weren't hovering, dangling temptingly under Nog's.

"Yes," Keiko said. "That's where Kassidy is."

"What'd I tell you?" Nog helped himself to the waffle he was working at depleting bit by bit anyway.

"Go on, just take it," Jake agreed.

"I am. Eating it, too," Nog assured, stuffing it in his mouth, talking with his mouth full, causing half of what he said to be reasonably incoherent, but that was okay. His audience got the gist of it. "Trust us. Jake and I have it all figured out. And if that's what we have to look forward to, to earn the rank of grownup…"

"We're not growing up?" Jake offered when Nog took time-out to swallow.

"Are we?" Nog checked.

"Hm…" Jake thought about it jokingly. "Maybe not."

"Yeah, try about ten years," Nog smacked his lips together with a lick and flick of his head for the open door. "Are we standing here for a reason?"

"Worf," Jake reminded.

"He's not coming."

"Yes, he is," Jake's plate bobbed dangerously close to Kira again. "Worf's coming, isn't he?"

Kira sighed longingly to the waffles. "Who knows."

Jake grinned. "Want one?"

Kira's head snapped up, her eyes flashed, she grabbed the plate possessively. "Give me that!"

"Finally," Keiko applauded.

"Just leave one for Doctor Bashir," Jake requested.

"Go away," Kira waved him back over to his side of the turbolift.

"Well, there are three," Keiko mentioned.

"All right, fine, that one," Kira poked the scrawniest one of the plump trio out of the way.

"What about Dax?"

"They can split it."

"Sounds fair to me," Keiko agreed and dove in.

  


CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Worf sighed when they left, their voices eventually vanishing down the corridor. He looked around the commissary. The only place left was the bridge. This, of course, was what Kira meant, and where Dax was by this time, ready to assume duty at 0700. He activated his com badge. "Commander Worf to Chief O'Brien."

_"Hey," the Chief answered jovially. __"How are things going? Need a few more minutes? That's okay, you got it. Ten, twenty, whatever you want, I can wait. Kira and Nog will be here any second, don't worry about it."_

Worf viewed his com badge silently. The Chief clear in his presumption Dax was in attendance with her husband, as he was clear in his unwitting announcement she was not yet aboard the bridge. Kira wrong, as the Chief was wrong, in her belief Dax was present, again, only a natural error. "I am looking for Doctor Bashir," he replied to O'Brien. "Is he aboard?"

_  


__"Bashir? No, haven't seen him? Why? Does he have himself locked out?" he chuckled. __"Probably still in bed. What's the matter? Dax still sick?" _

"On the sick rooster, yes," Worf agreed. "With Nog. The computer will not accept their authority without a release."

_"Forewarned. __Want me to send someone to wake him up?" he chuckled again suddenly, apparently checking himself to see if he could reach him. __"He may think he's dead but the emergency medical program thinks otherwise. It's not been activated. Banks have though…and, yup, they're up now. It's him. Probably in the shower. Dax and Nog were released…nope, they're not. You're right. Both still on the sick rooster. Definitely in the shower, either that or he fell asleep at the console with his coffee in his hand. I'm telling you, he has the life, I wish it were mine."_

"Thank you," Worf said. "I will advise Doctor Bashir to release Commander Dax and Nog."

_"Before Kira finds out she has two useless right hands and hands him his head," O'Brien laughed. __"I'm with you."_

"Yes." Worf signed off to look around the commissary one last time. "The Infirmary," he sighed. Dax and Bashir en route from one direction while he was departing in another. That still did not explain where either had been since neither were in the Infirmary at the time. "The lounge," Worf said aloud. Truly the last viable alternative where they had sat talking and intermittently consoling each other in their physical misery. It was an example of friendship and closeness that continued to agitate him beyond any acceptance. Deliberate, he maintained, on Bashir's part, and also now on Dax's, who chose to ignore her husband's wishes to cultivate a less foolish relationship with Bashir, and therefore a more acceptable and respectable one, and instead ignore her husband. Isolating and excluding herself from him as she went about her daily activities and duties. He failed to understand the reasoning, or the point, other than a childish power struggle. One he refused to tolerate, above all succumb to.

He scanned the deck of the corridor critically with its lingering dust of pastry crumbs not yet displaced by the ship's ventilation system when he exited the commissary to proceed to the open turbolift waiting for him with Kira, Keiko, Jake and Nog aboard. Two of them eating, two of them looking bored. He did not understand boredom, any more than he understood many afflictions and expressions common to a staggering majority of humanoid groups, Bajoran, Human, and Ferengi among them. Life was extremely directional and self-explanatory. Emotion, a vital component, always vigorous, virile, and occasionally malignant, needing to be controlled not tamed. In any event, it was never just simply bored.

"What?" Kira said to Worf's scornful review of the plate with its lone Aldorian waffle that she reluctantly passed back to Jake for safekeeping and Bashir.

"At half staff," Worf advised, "we do not have the maintenance crews available, nor is it appropriate to place additional demands on the systems to filter unnecessary particle waste. The commissary is for crew meals, the turbolifts and bridge are not…your raktajino, however, is acceptable," he relented slightly under her death look, "as we are at normal operation."

"Resume program," Kira directed.

"Yes," Worf concurred as the door closed. "It is currently 06:51. Chief O'Brien has determined Doctor Bashir to be in the Infirmary, in the process of reviewing Commander Dax's and Cadet Nog's medical status. I will advise him a release must be issued immediately as bridge operations will not accept their authority; he is aware of this, though apparently it is something he has momentarily forgotten. Chief O'Brien and Rom will remain aboard to insure you have sufficient assistance and coverage -- "

The turbolift halted, the door opening to the silence of the main shuttlebay and the runabout _Styx. Worf's crest crinkled with his frown. "This is not the bridge, nor the Infirmary."_

"Shuttlebay," Keiko slipped past him to catch up with Kira's stalk for the runabout. Jake and Nog maneuvering their way around him on a fast hike to join them. 

Worf followed with a huff. "I do not understand. As Chief Medical and Science Officer, Doctor Bashir, or Commander Dax, should be in attendance for any necessary explanation or guidance in use or application of the runabout's medical or science systems. As well as required direction, determination, and assignment of all investigations and experiments to the mission technicians…"

He ducked his head under the low clearance of the rear hatch, entering to halt in the mid-section a stride behind Kira and the others turning into the combined medical and science suite. Bashir sat on the main science console. Sipping from a cup of coffee in his hand, his feet propped up on the seat in front of him, conversing with Dax comfortably curled in the adjacent seat, her elbow propped on the back rest, her hand supporting her head as she drank her tea.

"What'd I tell you?" Kira's hand waved as Bashir looked up and Dax looked over her shoulder to their entourage of visitors.

"The shuttle," Jake grinned, entering with his plate extended in greeting. "Aldorian waffle for the teacher?"

"Oh, quite," Bashir took one appreciative look and that fairly settled that rather nicely.

"Sorry," Jake apologized to Dax. "I tried."

"It's all right," she assured understandingly.

"So it is," Bashir agreed. "We can just split this one."

"No," Dax shook her head. "That's also all right."

"Why?" he said. "It's fruit."

"Fruit?" she laughed at his effort to tear the soaked wafer neatly in half.

"Well, it has fruit in it," Bashir pronounced the juicy hemorrhage of berries and cheese not only delectably obscene, but healthy with a lick of his stained fingers. "Good fruit. Good-for-you-fruit…yes? Definitely yes? Absolutely, positively, there's no galactical reason why you would possibly deny yourself?" he wafted the sinfully delicious breakfast treat before her eyes. "A compliment, if not a sight better than that tasteless cup of tea."

"Oh, all right!" Dax snatched the plate.

"Harlot," Bashir laughed.

"Definitely," Dax's head tipped back with a blissful moan to Keiko. "Did the Chief include these in our replicator menu?"

"They better be," Keiko smiled.

"Make a note," Dax petitioned Kira.

"Already taken care of," she assured.

"Or it will be," Bashir glanced down on the console, suspecting one or two of their guests were there for reasons other than sharing breakfast; he was right. As early as it had seemed before, it was now quite close to being late. 06:54, as a matter of fact.

"Goodness," he hopped down with apologies to Kira and a look around for his tricorder that Dax handed him from the security of her lap. "Sorry. So absorbed, didn't realize the time. Dax and I have been tossing around a host of radical theories with Janice's experiments and studies of the mummy, including the possibility of linking Nadya's Band-Aid treatments. The basis lying in the controlled production of hybridomas -- hybrid cells," he smiled at Kira frowning over the display as he turned for the medical console. "Rapidly multiplying and dividing. A technique used in genetic engineering but also the treatment of disease, or injury, and yes, a host of biological products, including biological warfare. That's Nadya, if you're wondering. Though, realistically, of course, there had to have been rigorous treatments and therapies prior to Janice's intervention or the child never would have survived her initial injury.

"I think, however, if we look to the former ranks of their Maquis operation, that mystery can be solved fairly easily by the assumption they had a previous, possibly lengthy association with some medical practitioner or doctor.Most likely Bajoran, or Starfleet. Quite possibly 'on staff', if you will. Either killed, or deserted…I suspect some time ago, however," he acknowledged to Dax, "rather than during the recent conflicts due to the state of Nadya's health."

"It would make the most sense," Dax agreed to Kira and the others. "While some of the distortion of Nadya's chromosomes can be explained by extensive genetic manipulation, the present degree of corruption of the mutable sites indicate treatment was aborted before satisfactory completion."

"Insuring six years of life and hell," Bashir assured. "The rate of cellular development and division in a growing child would fairly mandate a steady breakdown in the synthesized structures, and the eventual reemergence of the cancers."

"Cancer cells also multiply rapidly," Dax explained to Nog and Jake. "Which is why Nadya's early and current treatment would have to be fairly consistent and ongoing if Doctor Lange's predecessors were relying on hybridomas, to the extent that Julian and I believe she may have been. Monoclonal antibiotic therapy is short-lived, attacking the superficial antigens of a cell only.The underlying cell itself is not destroyed, eventually recovering from the temporary retardation." 

"Got it," Jake nodded. "But wouldn't that suggest someone from outside Starfleet or Bajor who didn't have a background in Bajoran physiology?"

"Or someone who was extremely limited in available equipment, the same as Lange," Dax smiled. "But, no, that's a very good question."

"Sit down," Bashir agreed, inviting Keiko also and Kira if she were interested while he completed his screening of Nog, formally releasing him and Dax for duty and the bridge before the Chief called wondering what was going on.

"Thanks," Jake grinned and sat. He and Nog, along with Keiko listening attentively to Jadzia's brief explanation of what they were looking at on screen.

Kira likewise delayed her departure to question Bashir. Avoiding the subject of genetic engineering versus treatment or therapy, and the subsequent ethical and legal questions potentially surrounding both Lange's and her predecessor's involvement with the Maquis child, to focus on Bashir's mention of biological warfare, a question that Worf had. Finding the nature, or basis, of Doctor Lange's experiments having to be known, and therefore easily explained by the Maquis Anar, even if he couldn't explain in entirety the processes used by Lange in her development of her inventory of creams.

_If this explanation was one Anar cared to provide, which apparently he did not beyond the general description of botanical ointment of medicinal value. That to Worf was naturally suspicious. Suspecting Bashir and Jadzia realized this as well, even if Kira did not. With the full extent of Lange's experiments likely including an attempt to harvest select hybridomas to improve the quality of the clone cells she needed to mass-produce the monoclonal antibodies required by the ailing child.A premise that firmly suggested genetic engineering, and also the possibility Lange was considering the cloning of replacement organs for Nadya; possibilities that were definitely on Jadzia's mind. Caught up in Jake and Keiko's enthusiasm she confirmed the effects of the radiation poisoning on growth hormones, stunting the child's development, she hesitated with Jake's tactful inquiry into the child's current and expected intelligence quotient, her eyes flickering to Bashir's enjoying his portion of the tasty breakfast before smiling reassuringly._

"No, Nadya is quite fine," she said. "She's actually a remarkably resilient child… that's not to say the extent of her illness isn't visibly evident, it is. Though again, she's somewhat less fragile than one might perceive at first glance."

"Quite," Bashir washed down his waffle with a drink of coffee and a laugh, perching back on the console. "To say the least. Though to answer your question, which I suspect has something to do with genetic enhancement?"

"Just a question," Jake shrugged.

"Just an answer," Bashir agreed. "No. The brain is an organ, like any other organ, one you would certainly focus on saving and preserving first and foremost. The child is intelligent and discerning for her age. However, intelligence is not only physiological, or genetic, it's environmental."

"Ditto," Nog assured, having labored for nineteen years under the stigma of his species.

"Case in point," Bashir shrugged to Jake. "You taught Nog to read. Four years later Nog successfully achieved admittance to Starfleet Academy." 

He continued talking, lengthy and detailed, his speech smooth and flowing. Moving on to address Kira's question of Cardassian experimentation with biological warfare, and/or the possibility of environmental contamination from runoff from the Cardassian mines as somehow being related to the mummy's continued preservation while lying in her shallow grave, that Bashir described as a cesspool of waste. 

"Absolutely, yes." Bashir surprised Worf slightly with his empathic acceptance of the theory. "With the dramatic upheaval the Cardassian mining operations had to have caused to the region, it is entirely possible the woman actually died elsewhere -- ice, for example, creating a natural stasis, and hence mummification of the corpse. Finding itself dislodged from its original site, the body could merely have floated along some artery until becoming trapped again in the quagmire of the swamp -- it didn't have to be fifty years ago. It could have been two weeks or two days before Janice's discovery. We already know the area is prone to flooding, with it being highly plausible the mines aggravated the existing problem. In the meantime, the present level of pollution could very easily be a recipe for now chemical preservation, as it could have as easily been a liquid pool of acid, literally dissolving the corpse, which obviously it did not.

"However," Bashir said, "what's also possible is the question of the existence of a natural condition or phenomenon. Whether or not the identity of the corpse is that of a genetically engineered clone, superior to her species, or a resulting mutation from some ancient, possibly biological war. I've no doubt whatsoever Janice's studies included attempts to isolate the cause and source -- as ours certainly will," he assured. 

"Notwithstanding are there more of her out there? If so, where? Now that ourown hypotheses are a little clearer and better defined, a gross exam should be able to determine if the corpse traveled, how it traveled, if not realistically how far? The request for a botanist suggests Janice was focusing on plant pathology. Fungology, perhaps?" his grin spread itself between Dax and Keiko. "Indigenous or foreign? Who knows? The possibilities are endless and thrilling."

"Some," Kira granted, personally preferring a genetically engineered enslaved clone to having stumbled upon a four thousand year old community of cousins living a mere light-year from the Cardassian border.

"A vastly superior cousin," Bashir encouraged her imagination to run wild. "If she survived four thousand years in death, her calculated life expectancy would be very near the definition of immortal."

"If she didn't die," Dax smiled.

"If the process of regeneration was manageable." Keiko scrolled though Jadzia's limited notes on the contaminated samples, thinking of the stress of accelerated development and constant regeneration, but also of flowers that bloomed once in two hundred years, the whole of their enduring strength put into producing a brief, vivid moment of majesty. 

"How did she die?" Jake wondered.

"Drowning," Bashir confirmed, with a nod for Keiko. "Though one would think, yes, accepting the theory and level of regeneration, not only would death occur excruciatingly slowly, but also the time and ability to resuscitate her would be extended to weeks, rather than hours. Providing her body was physically capable of withstanding the constant cycling rather than each developing version of herself being weaker than the last, shortening her life expectancy considerably. Her body falling into a natural stasis, similar to sleep, for example, and eventual mummification."

"Or she was trapped," Kira shrugged, realistically.

"Or she was murdered," Nog said.

"Either or all," Bashir drank heartily from his coffee with a sly smile. "Including whether or not the condition is in any way contagious, or acquired through exposure."

Jake laughed. "So if Nog suddenly starts growing…"

"Or you yawning," Nog clouted him.

"Or our hair turning gray," Dax agreed.

"I'm leaving," Keiko assured.

"Definitely," Dax smiled at Kira.

"Okay, okay," she said. "The mummy's interesting. I admit the mummy's interesting." She reviewed Bashir. "He has a scar on his chest; two of them."

"Anar?" Bashir smiled. "Yes, well, in consideration of Jake and Nog, I'll refrain from asking how you know that."

Kira looked at him. "Are you interested or not?" she insisted as Nog groaned and Jake's head dipped with his snicker.

"Quite possibly," he assured. "Albeit Anar's injury could be old, in contrast, there was no indication Anon Dukat had suffered any previous injury at the time of my examination of him. Absolutely no suggestion one of his sentries endured plasma burns over 60% of his body, despite Anar's and Anon's claims of both during the Chief's hearing, and the prevailing lack of equipment, which, yes, should require there be physical evidence unless one was inclined to immediately accept the miraculous."

"They're odd," Kira said, unsure of how old. 

"Odd?" Bashir repeated. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do a little better than that."

"Round," she demonstrated impatiently, making a fist to show approximate size, and also placement, spacing. "Smooth. Like circles; round, smooth circles, yes," she insisted. 

"Like an indentation?" Dax mused, thinking.

"Impression," Kira agreed. "Yes. You can feel the outline of the scar, and there's a difference, not only in the texture of the scar -- "

"But the surrounding tissue," Bashir nodded to Dax. "Skin graft; has to be. There may have been too much damage to the flesh for Janice to feel she could insure effective closure; phaser, perhaps."

"I was thinking of his bat'telh," she replied almost apologetically.

"Yes," Kira assured. "And, I don't know, is that possible?"

Bashir gawked at the two of them. "To survive a blow to the sternum -- "

"And pleural cavity," Dax offered.

"From a bat'telh?" Bashir said. "It wouldn't simply be the external tearing -- "

"But the internal trauma," she said.

"Yes," Bashir insisted. "Emphatically yes. He'd be killed immediately."

"Or within minutes," Dax allowed.

"Yes," Bashir admitted. "If the bat'telh somehow missed a vital organ, but he would still be dead."

"Anyway to find out why he's not?" Jake ventured to Kira. "Within reason, I'm saying."

"Or at least what Lange may have done?" Dax tried not to laugh as Kira looked at Jake.

"What could she have done?" Nog muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Bashir.

"Damned if I know," he freely acknowledged, staring at the display. "I'd have to think about it…" he stared at Keiko.

"Plant life," she nodded.

"Mud specifically," Bashir grinned. "The mass gravesite is in an area of field. Janice may have done something as rudimentary as pack the wounds, either realizing or not realizing the implications at the time."

"Runoff from the mines," Dax interjected.

"Yes," Bashir said excitedly. "The flooding causing random deposits. It may be mineral or ore based. Some cultures do ingest dirt, in ceremony, or in a committed belief in the health properties."

"We do," Nog shrugged. "Maybe not the dirt."

"No, but the raw insect life," Bashir agreed. "It could be microscopic, fungal, amoeboid, in origin."

"It could be anything," Jake summed up what had already been decided before.

"Yes," Dax smiled at Kira. "Could you…"

"I'll ask," Kira assured. "I'll ask."

"Within reason," Dax teased.

"Maybe," Kira said and the group of them laughed again.

Worf watched from the background, listening to the ongoing exchange, studying the interaction that appeared natural. His gaze dropped again to Bashir's hand encircling his cup of coffee, the manner in which the doctor held the streamlined white mug seeming to fascinate him for some reason. The surety of the grip, the span of the fingers that were long, slender, strong-looking like cabled wire; he had a Human hand, it was the mug that intrigued him. Identical to the one Jadzia was holding, neither of them indicative of the _Defiant's replicators._

Worf glanced aft, over his shoulder, down the short distance to the turn into the commissary, adjacent to the medical and science suite. The mugs were reasonable, the Chief simply wrong which Infirmary. His attention on his task and duty at Conn, and not realizing the _Defiant's medical banks were being accessed from a remote location, also reasonable._

Worf remained focused on the commissary, the supply closets, and weapons locker directly opposite, forward of the standard rear hatch, and broad, doublewide entrance into the rear cargo hold that included a satellite engineering and transporter console with isolation chamber rated to contain radioactive, or biohazards.

His glance shifted back to the Infirmary. Selections from Lange's inventory were not present. The ensuing discussion of Doctor Lange and her home world had then developed secondary to the primary one of physical fitness and health. The hypospray, the extent of Jadzia's initial breakfast, as Bashir had deemed it, the medical tricorder was cradled in Jadzia's lap, suggesting she had conducted her own screening prior to Bashir's appearance, or Bashir was perhaps likewise feeling unwell.

Or had been. Worf fixated on Bashir's hand surrounding his raktajino, the coffee's warm steam dissipated as he perched on the console, one foot on the floor, the other off and sharing the balance of his light weight. He was now fine. Relaxed, refreshed, alert, continuing to talk unhurried and detailed. They had been there twenty minutes. The Chief poised to hail at any time, Kira just now mentioning the bridge, unenthusiastic as the others to leave the discussion behind. Worf hesitated in his annoyance as he had hesitated upon his arrival in the door. The scene was harmless and expected by both Kira and Keiko O'Brien who attributed nothing unusual to their belief Jadzia and Bashir would be here aboard the _Styx's Infirmary, as did neither Jake and Nog react to anything as being out of the ordinary. To the contrary, all were now involved in the chatter of their anticipations and field expedition. _

Once again Worf had no idea what he was thinking above, beyond, apart from what everyone else seemed to be thinking, seeing or responding to. Uncertain in his foundation that was without foundation like that one foot of Bashir's dangling in the air. The split, flare of his trouser cuff draped over the neck of his low-heeled boots, neat, crisp, clean.

Worf's head snapped up. From the polished leather of Bashir's boots, the deft grip of the coffee in his hand, to the glossy sheen of Jadzia's hair. She as refreshed, alert, renewed, alive as Bashir was. They were not two people who had spent the late and early hours comforting each other in their physical misery, but had separated at some point to ready themselves for the day. Where? The shower opposite Bashir's quarters aboard the crew deck was unused since 23:11:10. The additional available two had to support Nog and Jake Sisko, and possibly Jadzia, though she, as Bashir, had been gone from their cabins for hours. The _Defiant's Infirmary was vacant. Worf stared aft to the commissary, feeling the approach of the center escape hatch behind him as he stepped back into the corridor. He turned around staring at the hatchway, a division marker between the two crew showers supporting their sectioned crew quarters, two aft, two forward, completing the design of the mid-section. He almost touched the entry panel of the shower closest to his reaching hand to check for the time of use, if there was use, he did not. The span of his fingers closed, curling into a fist that could tear Bashir's head from his neck sending it smashing into the wall with one blow, his decapitated corpse toppling over, the mug of coffee dropped and broken on the floor. Worf turned back around staring at the cup in Bashir's hand, his watch missing, his tension, giddiness, gone. The chaotic, angry frizzle of spitting bursts of nervous energy. In its place Bashir peaceably drank his coffee, never once looking up to meet the eyes of the Klingon in the doorway, or even acknowledging his presence at all. Worf swore a death curse, a blood oath._

"But, in epilogue, _did nothing," Q advised Sisko oblivious to his early morning visitor as well as the naughty going's-on of half his senior crew with a haughty arch of his brow."As the Trill sat and listened, and the doctor sat and talked, the Klingon did nothing, and so the triangle that wasn't was now born."_

"Yes, well, Doctor Bashir is actually right," Ziyal announced her arrival with a yawning stretch in his right ear. "Now is not the time -- "

"Quite all right!" Q slammed her on the back in reassurance with a beaming smile, the apple she was just about to bite, shooting itself out of her hand, across the room, and out the door. "They'll work it out. Elsewhere, elsewise, _I have a plan."_

"Another one?" Ziyal sighed after her disappearing apple, rolling its way into the dimension of Unknown.

"The same one," Q assured, gently pressing her head down over Captain Sisko's shoulder and her nose upon Commander Dax's journal. _"Read." _

"'These are brutal men, Benjamin…'" Ziyal read, Q nodding, and Dax's voice filling the room.

_Intelligent. Soldiers. Warriors. Martok, Tain, Anar, Tan.They are not Dukat, who must seem more like a fool to them than even to us. An aside thought has me doubting if Tan would acknowledge that, never publicly. I think, however, if we look at it from the perspective of your Terran "brothers under the skin" some of this will begin to make more sense. Respect, if they couldn't extend anything more to each other, which obviously they can and do, in the instance of Anar and Tan. Anon and Pfrann are young men. The mutual friendship they feel and have with Anar would have to be different -- if you say no, be advised Curzon says yes. My friendship with you, Benjamin was different than the one shared with my peers. You were a young man; I was already old. Experienced and wise enough to know there are few Benjamin Siskos, truly gifted, truly special, truly unique. We want you. We thrive through you. Your rank and species irrelevant._

Ziyal straightened up.

"What?" Q interrupted his approval to groan.

"It's very interesting," Ziyal agreed. "Commander Dax is very astute. Though I know Chief Engineer Tan's loyalty to my father is unshakable, whether or not he privately agrees or disagrees with him, it's not important. The leader is always right. That is the First Commandment, and my father is the leader, there is no other.

"The same…" she continued as Q roused himself from his puzzled gawk to glare suspiciously over Captain Sisko's shoulder and down on Commander Dax's journal. "As Anon is the leader after my father, and George is the leader after him. Chief Engineer Tan is a firm believer in rule by hereditary aristocracy -- "

"Read!" Q stuffed an extradimensional copy of Commander Dax's journal in her hand, this one scrolled to the right entry.

"I'm reading," Ziyal shrugged, and she was.

_It's probably safe to presume that one association was choice. Dax's voice refilled the room.__ Anon. The others are a need: the UFP and Bajor. Without which the colony will not survive regardless of whose name its leader bears. A rude awakening for a former Maquis leader; I've mentioned this to Julian. One that in the end finds the much hated Federation the winner, with the power, in control. Not the Klingons. Not the Dominion. And not the Cardassian Union -- the only other choice Anar has if they are to survive. Housing the colony under the umbrella of the Cardassian Union, however unstable it might be, it's still far more stable than they are. I highly doubt however if that option has ever crossed or would cross Anar's mind with any degree of seriousness.Believable or not Anon and his brother and troop are unique, are friends, now family with Anon's marriage to Lange. Since Anar apparently doesn't object to the union he has to approve, not only accept, if only because I can't see him accepting anything of which he does not approve._

_To the opposite, we are definitely vying for his approval, you probably more than any of us. A Federation Starfleet Captain. Emissary to the people of Bajor. The Prophets' chosen. Anar has to have come to know about you at some point during his longstanding career as Maquis leader. Nevertheless, I believe you will find he is holding his blessing in abeyance, waiting for us and you to prove ourselves, not he have to prove anything._

_I have this image in my mind of him having done the same thing with Anon Dukat. Probably differently than his approach to us, or possibly the same. In the end Anon did what? Passed? By the simple act of accepting the colony, noticing and not contributing to their strife? Doing what he could to alleviate what he could? Solidifying his unity with the Bajoran settlement by marrying the Human surrogate daughter of the Town Elder Shakaar Adon? A closing act that is either brash or brave. Independent or arrogant. Your choice. To me, it simply suggests while Anon may be his father in some ways, he also might have something his father lacks: tolerance for species other than his own. A true tolerance. True appreciation. True love for the Human Lange with her flowing Klingon hair._

"How romantic," Ziyal had to laugh out loud at the choice of words, having an idea Dax had done the same.

"You're supposed to be reading," Q reminded sternly.

"I am reading," Ziyal assured. 

_What all of this actually means, Commander Dax continued. __Where it might, will, or may not lead, I'm unsure. Other than in there somewhere the truth may find Anar equally capable as Anon in his ability to see beyond the species Cardassian and the name Dukat despite his suspicions surrounding Kira of having this same talent…_

"'Fixation,'" Ziyal paused.

"'If one embraces Julian's opinion,'" Q nodded wickedly.

_With Julian citing Anar as unbalanced. Commander Dax agreed. __He's not. It's rude, though reasonable to question Kira's association with Ziyal and Dukat. Anar doesn't know Kira, we do._

_Kira probably tempted to put Anar in the pit with the Klingons (I promise to stop her if she tries). And then there's me with my question if Anar is voicing suspicions at all? Rather than attempting to determine if Kira is a kindred soul capable of forgetting what she can't forgive for the sake of future generations?_

_Maybe. __Difficult to tell. Anar's personal interest in Kira is obvious. As obvious as the man we met on the station is the man who lives here. Honest when he says he's a leader, not a diplomat. A general personality that lends itself to being strikingly similar to Anon Dukat. Simply older and more self-assured…More tempered? Reasonably so, perhaps. What's most interesting to me is that Anar also seems to have difficulty with general dishonesty (Anon on the witness stand?) exploding in blunt frustration long before he lies. That rule, of course, does not apply when he's the one in control and truly doesn't want you to know something, or doesn't wish to answer. Then he just ignores you -- again, Anon Dukat? I'll close with that thought. The children have been much too quiet for some time now and we both know what that means._

"So we do," Q snatched the padd away as Ziyal stared up at him. "As there you have it in magnetic white and blue. A triangle, by any other name, on the verge. Hm? _On the verge. A triangle," he formed one between his pointer fingers and his thumbs. "One side named Kira, the other named Anar, and the other named his Gul Dukat. You think not?"_

"Oh, well…" Ziyal stammered.

"Fine!" the robes of Q whooshed out as he turned on his heel. "Be your father's daughter. Let him linger in that Federation asylum until he rots. Let Gowron triumph, and Winn prevail. The Dominion _oozing their gelatinous slime from the Alpha Quadrant to the Beta…and when they do," he threatened her. "Don't call Q, we'll call you!"_

He vanished. Ziyal blinking after him until she just shrugged, found herself a fresh apple and sat down on the sofa to console Captain Sisko how Jake and all others would be fine, even though he couldn't see her anymore than he could see the next two years in front of him. But that was all right. They came of their own accord, just like dear Opaka said, and she had complete faith Captain Sisko would come as well.


End file.
